A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch

We had the PERFECT weekend, weather-wise. Really, we had a slew of probably 10 days in a row of rain-free perfect days in the 70's and 80's...definitely the last gasp of summer. I took the boys to the Kuiper Family Farm in Maple Park. We were there a couple years ago and it was the perfect day to go back. I don't know why Jason insisted on wearing pants and long sleeves, he is usually the one who runs hot and wants to wear tees and shorts in the winter. At least I didn't have to slather on the sunscreen on his paper-white skin. Here, the boys climbed a mountain of tractor tires and then slid down through that huge pipe.


While we were on the Tractor Tire Mountain, we could see the corn maze below. There were three difficulty levels and we did them all. To make the maze even more interesting, we were given a monopoly-type game sheet. As we progressed through the maze, we had to look for posted special signs which had unique paper punches and had to punch the game sheet. Even though we went through the maze quite a few times over the course of several hours, we never did get all the punches.
A very interesting swing set!Maybe the farm owners could put the sign facing the sun next year, so we could see the kids better...and adjust the height. Jack was exactly 4' at his six-year checkup in April, and Jason was 3'4" at his 3-year physical...and I think they've grown just a little bit since.

I practically had to drag the kids in the petting zoo, but once they got in there they had a good time feeding and brushing the animals. Jason had a heart-to-heart talk with a goat. This shot was taken seconds before Jase leaned in and gave the goat a big kiss. Ewww. Thank goodness for sanitizer.

We did the obligatory haywagon ride to a back field where there was an enormous pumpkin patch. I told the boys they could get whatever pumpkin they could carry. Jack found the biggest one he could handle. Jason decided to wait until we went by the farm store, where they had much smaller pumpkins for sale. Good thing the farm loans wagons, because we ended up going through the maze again for another hour or so.

The farm is just awesome, and is a bit better each time we go back. There was a haunted forest (Jason did NOT like that!), a barn filled with multiple levels of hay bales for climbing and sliding down, a rope maze, a huge rope spider web for crawling on, a race course with pedal tractors, giant sand boxes filled with dried corn, and these neat springy things for the kids to ride.

Kuiper's gets five stars from us! Here's the final shot, after Jason and I picked our pumpkins from the front store. We grabbed a couple apple cider donuts and headed out, exhausted but very happy.