We went last year, (you can read about that here) and I actually wrote a little note to myself at the end that it was worth the money because I wasn't sure whether or not to go there last year because it's a little expensive. I found out earlier this year that they hold "Homeschooling and Moms Group" days during the week, when they're normally closed. My Moms of Multiples group decided to sign up for today and since the boys were out of school because of Columbus Day, I signed up immediately. It ended up filling up so fast, so I'm glad that I signed up when I did, I've been looking forward to this for about 2 months. Steed's Dairy is only open on weekends and it's $10.00 a person to get in, but on the special weekdays that they do for the homeschooling and moms groups, it's only $6.00 a person and you get a free pumpkin to take home, so it's such a great deal. Plus, you don't have to fight crowds, it's definitely the way to do it.
We woke up this morning and it was sprinkling and cloudy, but I wasn't going to let that stop us. I packed tons of stuff-change of clothes, rain boots, towels, etc. I also put the boys in their old shoes in case it was muddy. They opened at 9:30 and we were allowed to stay until 1:30, so we got there right at 9:30.
When we got there, I saw several people from our moms group. I was excited about catching up with some of the other moms, but the boys had different plans. I probably got to talk to the other moms for about 5 minutes at the very end, when the boys were running out of steam. When we first got there, the boys were going 100 miles an hour.
They started with the tube slide.
A view from the tube slide of the sand mountain.
They have several covered gazebos and we were allowed to bring in any food we wanted for this day for picnics and past that is the air pillow.
The boys went down the slide once and then immediately ran to check out all the fun things to play on. This train is new, and they loved it.
Everything they had was for climbing and crawling through, just perfect for active kids.
Evan spent about .5 seconds on everything, he'd climb up, go down the slide, and then run to the next thing. He likes to check everything out and then go back and take his time, but he has to do a quick run through of everything first.
There was this enormous sand mountain, with a tunnel for the kids to crawl through. There was tons of buckets, shovels, trucks, etc. Carter was having such a blast on this, but Evan checked it out and was ready to move on. Last year, I had Greg, so we split up, but this year, it was just me, so I was having to keep them together. I kind of felt bad rushing Carter from thing to thing, but he didn't mind at all. Also, it helped Carter get a chance to do everything, because I know last year there were a couple things he didn't do because he was perfectly content playing on one thing for awhile. I did decide that next year, I'm going to bring my mom so the boys can do different things.
The boys loved climbing and sliding down the sand.
Then we went over to the air pillow. The boys had a blast and stayed on this forever!
All the other kids finally got tired and got off except for two older girls. They ended up playing with the boys for the longest time. The boys would sit down and they'd jump and it'd bounce the boys. They all got the biggest kick out of it. They turned it into a game--who would bounce off first-Evan or Carter? They'd take turns and the boys would jump and the girls would sit. It was cute.
Then the we moved on to the zip line.
They would laugh and giggle while they went.
They went 3 times each, in a row, and they'd bring the swing back each time.
I don't know if they had this last year, if they did, the boys didn't do it. There were several rubber ducks that you could put in these and then you had to pump the water to get them to move. The boys had fun with this and there were spots that the ducks would get stuck at, so the boys had to pump hard to get more water to move them, it was really neat.
Like the sand mountain, this is such a simple thing really, but was such a huge hit with the kids.
Carter taking a turn.
I did not zoom in on this, the cows in the field were close enough to touch. They had running water that you could turn on to wash your hands and the cows would come up and drink what ran down.
View of the field
There was an actual bounce house there, too. Normally bounce houses are what the boys will spend the most time on. They spent about 2 minutes on here and never went back. Hardly any kids used this, which really says a lot about how much fun the rest of the place was when a bounce house is the boring part.
Next, we went on the hay ride. I'll give you one guess to which boy was being super cooperative with pictures. ;)
I took two pictures before we started and then one of the view-I know there's a lot of pictures, but I promise I didn't have my phone out the whole time.
The boys wanted to take a selfie, they love to see themselves in the camera.
The boys got the biggest kick out of the hay ride. They love seeing hay bales and will point them out when we are in the car, so they did just that while we were on the hay ride. With every single bale of hay they saw. They were saying things like "wow, this hay is close, oh look-hay far away" "more hay" The woman next to them got tickled with them because they were so excited to see the hay.
We went out to the car and had a quick snack and drink and then went back in to do some more things. I wanted to get a picture of the boys in front of the sign. Look at Carter's sweet smile. And then look at Evan. He is such a stinker!!
Haha, He loves to make faces now when I take pictures.
Carter was being such a trooper with the picture taking. I'm sure the next outing we do, they'll switch and Evan will be smiling away and Carter will be not into it.
Both smiling!!
When we went back in, we headed towards the petting zoo area, but got distracted by several things along the way. They had a place for the kids to lasso.
The boys loved this. Evan managed to lasso himself. Twice. Haha, I don't know what he was doing, but he'd swing his arm back to throw it and it'd fall on him, or catch his foot.
He loved it, though.
Carter just seemed happy swing the lasso around, not throwing it, just swinging it.
Evan kept trying to get it.
Then, he moved on to this activity. The birds were on little springs and you could hit them with a bean bag and they'd fall over and pop back up.
All these things would be packed on a weekend. But, he had the whole thing to himself. He was able to try it several times and then go back and get the bean bags he had thrown.
While we were doing that, Carter managed to lasso the bull!!!
So, he came over and played this game with Evan for a little bit.
Evan would barely hit a bird and it'd hardly move, but he was going to throw those bean bags until he hit a bird straight on. Once he did, we moved on to the next thing.
We finally made it over to the petting zoo area, but it's right next to the little pumpkin patch, so we stopped there first.
Carter thought this pumpkin was pretty amazing.
They realized how big and heavy it was.
The view from the petting zoo/pumpkin patch area.
The boys could not wait to milk this cow. They watched a girl do it first and then they took a turn.
Both of them got it right away.
This was Evan's favorite animal out of the entire barn.
They had some goats.
Carter just loved this little calf. He stayed and pet this thing for a long time. He'd get so tickled at him and the calf tried to lick him a couple times and he'd just laugh and laugh. Evan pet him, walked around the rest of the barn and came back and Carter was still sitting with this calf.
So cute.
Then, Carter moved on to this pig.
And the cow.
We passed by the chickens.
Pointing at the rooster. Carter said the chickens were "bootiful" So sweet. I love how much he loves animals.
After the petting zoo, the boys played some corn hole. This might have been why Evan was not as interested in the petting zoo, he saw this before we went in the barn and was ready to play. He loves this game. He played a little bit at the fall festival that we went to last weekend too.
Both boys seemed to enjoy it a lot, so much so, that when I got home I looked up buying one for them on Amazon, saw how crazy expensive they were and text my mom to see if my dad could make something like this for them. They ended up getting the boys a bean bag tossing game very similar to this and I'm so excited for them to try it.
As the morning went on, it really started to clear up. It got sunny and it got hot.
There's a play house with a play kitchen and table set up inside. The boys played in that for a little bit.
After that, they had made it around the whole park, so then they went back and started playing on things.
Look at this fun castle.
All these wooden things were so neat and all the kids loved them.
I think they use this to give train rides on the weekends, but today they just had it set up for the kids to play on.
There was a corn maze and the boys saw it and wanted to check it out. I said, we can walk up to it and you can see what the corn looks like and I'll take a picture. Evan was not having that. He decided that we were doing the maze. I did not feel like getting lost in a maze with two four year olds that had been playing hard for 3 hours when it was 93 degrees out. But, it went great. The boys had a blast, they had some of the maze blocked off, so you couldn't get too lost and we made it through there in no time. The boys loved it, more Evan than Carter. Carter liked it but kept saying "I don't want to get lost in here" haha. I had to keep telling Evan to slow down and wait, he could care less. I think he'd done the thing by himself and not thought twice about it.
It went smoothly, but it still felt great to make it to the end.
My little dare devil going down this two story, tube slide head first.
The boys decided to go back and spend some more time on the sand mountain. It was getting hot, but they were having a blast.
A picture of the tube slide.
The boys played on this for enough time for me to actually talk with some other moms for a minute.
I just love coming during the week. There was enough kids for the boys to play with and have fun with, but there was just no waiting for anything, there were plenty of toys to go around and it was just the best atmosphere there. Most of the kids were the boys age or so and the ones that were older were there because they're homeschooled and they were very, very well behaved. It was just such a good group there.
More bouncing, it was really starting to clear out at this point. It started at 9:30 and it was about 12:30-1:00 and kids were done. They were tired and hungry. The boys weren't running at the same speed they were when we first got there, but they were going strong.
We went in the corn box (like a sand box with corn) It was shaded, even around where the moms were standing and watching their kids, so that was nice. The kids all played so nicely.
Evan was laying down and covering himself with corn.
The moms were able to talk for a few more minutes while the kids played so well in the corn box.
I let the boys each pick one more thing that they wanted to do before we left and they picked the slide. They went down several times and then we headed home, at 1:20. 4 hours we spent playing there and they were moving, climbing, crawling, jumping, etc the entire time. I know they were worn out, but they were so happy. They also didn't put up a fight about leaving or whine about doing anything else, they listened very well.
Actually, I must say, the boys were angels while we were there today. No fussing, no fighting, nothing. When I had to ask Evan to wait on Carter, he didn't whine. When I had to ask Carter to come with us because Evan was ready to go onto something else, he did it happily. They were great for me today. The only bad thing that happened was when I took the boys to the port-a-potty (if you know me, you know that's all I have to write, just going to a port-a-potty is enough to ruin this wonderful day) but there's more. Carter gets in one and slips and falls on the floor in front of the toilet, in what I prayed to God, was just mud. There was brown stuff all over his leg, pans, arm, etc. He was fine physically, but I about had a stroke right there. I got him cleaned off and did a sniff test and did determine it was mud/dirt--thank goodness.
When we left, the boys each got a mini pumpkin, which they were so excited about. They have told me about 5 different plans that they have for this pumpkins. Did you notice that Carter's is much bigger than Evan's? If you didn't, you probably don't have twins. ;) Evan didn't mind and was making a big joke out of it. He kept making his pumpkin talk in a baby voice saying "I'm a tiny pumpkin, it makes me so sad, I want to be as big as you giant pumpkin" haha.
Overall, this was one of the most fun things we've done with them. I just love doing things that the boys enjoy so much. I didn't do anything here, but just watching them have so much fun really makes my day. I'm already looking forward to it for next year. I wanted to post so many pictures and details for me (and my memory of this stuff) but also since Greg didn't get to go with us this year, I know he wants to see this stuff and since I talked it up so much to my mom and sister through text, I thought they might want to see it all. Each year, the boys are getting older and I never know when that magical age is going to be behind us. Right now, they love doing everything. Everything is so exciting and fun, and it's so sweet and I love this age. I'll be sad when they get to the age where a day like this isn't as amazing to them as it was today. Carter kept saying "Oh, wow, Slides--I love slides, so much fun" Evan would say "oh, look mom, I'm bouncing, look how high I'm going" and just how excited they were to see every single bale of hay on the hay ride. It was seriously one of my favorite days with them and I'm glad we all had so much fun.
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