Homeschool meetup at local farm

One of my friends from church told me that there was a local homeschool group in our area and she invited me to the group on facebook. I'm so grateful, because today I was able to join them on a field trip to a local farm.

Proof that we're not the only people who homeschool...  haha!

I will admit this was exhausting for me to take my two little kids there by myself, but it was a lot of fun. The kids had a great time. Thankfully, my friend, her husband and children went too. It was so much fun to see them. They and their kids were extremely helpful. I'm quite sure I would have lost either my mind or one of my children before we left if it weren't for their assistance. :) On that note, I have noticed one of the many blessings of big families is that the children tend to be more helpful and considerate. I'm not saying that this is a hard and fast rule by any means. I have definitely seen very helpful children from smaller families, but generally speaking, I feel like the older kids of large families are always super helpful and without any prompting from their parents. They just know to help out with the little ones it seems. I love that about big families and I hope God will bless us with a big family and that our children will turn out like those children. :)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand... :) We had a wonderful time at the farm. This farm was pretty awesome. One especially awesome about this family run farm is that they home school too! Honestly, I don't know how they do it all with the farm, as I struggle to keep my house half-way clean, home school Mary and teach a handful of students piano. Anyway, the homeschool group went as a group and we got a little "train" (more like linked wagons, pulled by a tractor), a hay ride, corn maze (which we skipped, LOL), a sunflower forest (which was painful with my toddlers...), petting zoo, and pumpkin patch, plus more! We started with the sunflower forest, which as I said was painful for me. I think this is not meant for a barely 2 year old (and a tiny one at that) and an almost 4 year old who does not like to be messy. LOL!!!!!! Anyhoo, we finally made it out of the sunflower jungle and I was already exhausted. Now mind you, you had to climb all around the sunflowers (which I guess are normally all down on the ground, but weren't this time) and there were no paths...which I didn't realize. LOL I thought it was like a corn maze, made out of sunflowers, but I was wrong.  I was able to handle these sunflowers much more easily...

Are my kids the only ones obsessed with these cut outs??

Mary is a little more obsessed with these than Philip...

After this they went to the corn maze and Philip wanted to be held the whole walk there, and I decided this was not going to go well as I was already tired from carrying Philip (I foolishly did not bring my mei tai, because I figured he'd want to run around...). This is when the eldest son of the other family I knew kindly offered to carry Philip for me. I'm telling you, these kids are gems. Much to my dismay, Philip would have nothing to do with that, and wanted me to carry him. I realized they were really tired. So I decided to walk back to the picnic area and give them some food and let them rest a bit. This helped a little, but they were still kinda grumpy until the they did the "train ride" to the pumpkin patch. My kids were super excited about this. We all went on this little ride to the pumpkin patch and the kids picked out their pumpkins. :)

Excited for the train ride!

Mary's favorite friend- Olivia. :)

One of the many failed attempts to get a group shot...

Pumpkins!!!!!

 Then we went to the petting zoo area. This was great! They had these neat tractors that are like bikes. I love how they were powered by bicycling instead of electricity or gas!

They loved seeing all the animals too!

Olivia was watching out for Philip's fingers! I'm sure he would have been pecked by the chickens if she didn't warn him!

Mary petting a goat.

Olivia telling Mary about the goats! :) (They have goats!)

After this the kids played in their large sandbox. Philip loved the trucks and tractors. Mary liked the horses. :)

The we went on a tractor ride! The owner was so kind and gave us a ride even though the rest of the homeschool group had already taken the ride. We took too long in the pumkin patch and missed it... oops!

Tractor ride! My kids (and Olivia :)) insisted on bringing their pumpkins.

No chance of separating these kids from their pumpkins! :)

Unless, of course, you start falling asleep on the hayride...

The kids all wanted to see the tractor!

After the hayride we got some cider donuts and the kids wanted to play in the sandbox again. When we left, Philip was so sad and wanted to stay and play with the trucks and tractors in the sand. Once again, our friends' eldest son helped me carry things and watch Mary as we crossed the street to our car. We had a great time at the farm, and I hope we can go back with Matthew before the season is over!

That was our fun-filled day today! Now it's off to get ready to go to First Friday devotions at church and get started getting ready for Mary's birthday party!!!