A Day at the Arboretum

John took off work Monday to spend a little time with me and the kids. I had wanted to go to the arboretum to see the fall flowers and pumpkins so we headed off that direction. It was really chilly Monday (we should have gone last week), but we still had fun. I bought a coat for Jake Sunday night since he didn't have one and John didn't like me putting him in one of his sisters on Saturday (the girl has 30 coats I think!). I should have drug out our stroller blanket too, but once we got moving around and when we were in the sun it wasn't bad at all.
On Monday's they have a petting zoo, face painting, games and crafts for kids and even a little music. Our first stop was the petting zoo. The kids were all excited (especially Abby - she had been saying "cow" our entire drive so we were really hoping for a cow at the petting zoo, but the goats, chickens and miniature horse were good enough). We were just about to get the kids out of the stroller to see all the animals when I hear "Wendy!". I looked up and saw Mary and Audrey! What a surprise!! She was supposed to meet her playgroup there, but that never happened so we ended up chatting and letting the kids run around together for a while.
Abby was in heaven with all the animals. She didn't know which animal to pet first. Jake took to a fuzzy little chicken. He plopped down right next to it and started petting it. I think he thought it was a little dog, like Sadi (I couldn't tell it was a chicken at first), but that's okay. I have to say I was very impressed with the animals...there were so many kids running around petting them and not one was phased by it.

Next we headed over to the little house made of pumpkins. It was really neat and Mary grabbed a cute family picture of us.

The kids loved looking out the window at all the pumpkins (and I think they enjoyed standing on the pumpkins to look out the window too). We managed to grab a few of all three kids looking out. Very cute!

I just thought this was the cutest picture ever of Abby walking by the row of pumpkins.

Next we headed to the pumpkin patch. You could purchase pumpkins, but the kids loved just climbing over them all. Plus we just got a few pumpkins at the pumpkin patch on Saturday.
My little monkeys!

At one point, Abby and John took off chasing a bird. Jake and I continued to play with the pumpkins and later he found the metal sign to play with. He was banging away, making a lot of racket when John and Abby made their way back to the pumpkin patch trying to find us. He heard the banging and looked over our direction and saw it was Jake making all the noise.

The kids had a lot of fun, although they haven't learned you can't pick every flower. They kept picking flowers off the mums and throwing them on the ground laughing. Sorry arboretum!