Today Peter, Alethea, Lydia and I went to a farm for a little autumnal family fun.  My friend Katie and her daughter Madelyn joined us and together we had an exhausting, but delightful morning.

First stop: The mobile chicken coop.  Alethea and Madelyn both had fun making chicken noises, although at one point Madelyn was heard to say, “Rrrroooooar!”  It was super cute!

Next up: The pedal cars.  Daddy took Alethea for a spin!  Then Mommy took a picture.  (Can you tell someone has recently reached the ‘likes to make goofy faces for the camera’ phase?)

And then: Into the corn maze!  Here’s Katie and Madelyn navigating the path.  Amazing that we went through it with three kids under three years of age and didn’t lose anyone, huh?

A brief pit stop: Alethea was interested to discover that we were in fact walking through ‘corn on the cob’ and was happy to share her knowledge with Madelyn.

However: The novelty of walking through corn on the cob wore off quite a ways before we reached the exit.  The scenery didn’t change much and the sun was beating down on us, which is a weird thing to write about an outdoor adventure in Minnesota in OCTOBER, but it was hot.  And uncomfortable.  So we cheated, looked at the map and got out in the most direct way we could.  But, right outside the maze, the good times continued at the giant spider’s web.

Take two: After Peter got tired of bouncing Alethea in the web (which was definitely before Alethea was tired of being bounced!) Lydia took a seat and I snapped a picture of my girls sitting together (a rare occurrence, let me tell you!)

Sit down for a second: All of us together on a bright sunny day seemed to be the perfect opportunity to try and capture a family portrait.  We have two little girls who don’t necessarily smile on cue, especially when they are hot and hungry.  Fortunately, they do both like being tickled.

And then: We discovered the girls’ favorite fall activity, the corn box!  ‘What’s a corn box?’ you ask.  It’s like a sand box, but filled with feed corn.  Alethea couldn’t get enough of the scooping, filling and digging.  I told Peter I want one for our back yard.  It was so much less messy than a sand box.

A jealous moment: We didn’t put Lydia in at first because we thought we’d spend the whole time fishing kernels out of her mouth, but she was clearly feeling left out of the corn box fun.

Still in the box: And who could blame Lydia for feeling grumpy about being excluded.  Alethea was having a blast and Madelyn thought the corn box was pretty cool too.

One more in the box: So we let Lydia join us, and what do you know, she was pretty good about not putting the corn in her mouth (although all bets were off when it came to the buckets and scoops).

A wake up call: After Lydia almost fell asleep in the corn box, we decided we’d better finish up our farm tour before we reached the point of complete exhaustion.

Moving on: As we walked across to the barn yard to visit the animals, I tried to tactfully remove corn from places the good Lord never intended it to go (I bet we’ll be finding random kernels around the house for weeks after this). It turned out to be a good thing we had corn on us though because we visited the chickens, sheep, horses, ducks and geese, all of whom were looking for handouts.  The funniest part of the visit was Alethea constantly talking to the animals as though they could understand her.  “Hello, Mr. Donkey!  How are you?”

And finally: No fall farm visit would be complete without a few pumpkins, so we purchased some little ones from the garden center and then took pictures on the big pile outside.

More pumpkins: Madelyn willingly took her turn on the pile of gourds.

Last, but not least: Alethea got her picture taken, but only after I told her she could have ice cream if she would sit on the pumpkins and smile for the camera.  Perhaps I should have specified what kind of a smile was required to earn her reward.

Home again, home again: After devouring our well-deserved lunch at Dairy Queen, we headed home for naps all around!  It was a glorious day!