Our Pumpkin Patch Visit 2013

I love Autumn here in America. It's definitely my favourite season. 

With all of the beautiful trees ablaze with colour at this time of year Autumn is much more of a distinct season in the US than it is in Australia. Even here in northern California where it doesn't get all that cold, Autumn has a definite feel to it. In fact, here in the Bay Area early Autumn is actually the warmest part of the year with clear, sunny days and less fog than Summer. Although the days are warm the nights are starting to get chilly and the mornings can be quite crisp.

One of the main things I love about Autumn is the holidays. We've fully embraced Halloween and Thanksgiving since we moved to the US and the girls love getting into the spirit. Over the weekend we got into the holiday spirit by visiting a pumpkin patch to choose pumpkins for our Halloween jack-o'lanterns. We jumped in a Zipcar and headed east to Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm.

Scary pumpkin!

The girls chose a few small and medium sized pumpkins each plus one big pumpkin. They would've loved to bring home one of the giant pumpkins if only we had the space for it. There were so many different pumpkins to chose from in all sizes and lots of different colours. I tried to convince the girls that we needed a white pumpkin to make into a ghost jack-o'lantern but they wanted to stick with good old orange.

Reading to choose pumpkins

Lola liked the tiny pumpkins

Lots of tiny pumpkins

So many varieties

I love the colours of the Indian corn (purely decorative)

Lola chooses a pumpkin

Let's find a bigger pumpkin

Ava shows off how strong she is

Into the cart it goes

Ava enjoyed pushing the pumpkin cart

Lola found it a little trickier!

Off to pay

Getting the pumpkins measured for pricing

Ava insisted on lifting them all into the car 

Lola goes for a ride

Ava's a little too heavy for Lola

Riding together

Pumpkin farms and pumpkin patches always have extra entertainment for the kids. Many have bouncy castles, fairground attractions and other such unrelated entertainment. I like the idea of going somewhere a little more authentic. Somewhere that doesn't need such entertainment to draw people in. Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm has a few extra activities for the kids but they're all related to pumpkins, corn and the Autumn season such as a hay bale maze, sandboxes filled with corn, farm animal petting zoo etc. Unfortunately we were a little short on time so we had to give this part a miss however we did make sure to stop for cheesy Autumn and Halloween photos and took a few quick runs through the much smaller hay bale maze they had on site.

All aboard the Halloween train

Pumpkin heads

Pumpkins make perfect seats for little bottoms!

3 foot tall this year

Getting close to 4 foot

And even taller now!

Posing with the giant pumpkin

Riding the cool bus

The cool bus just got a little cooler ;)

Posing on the hay 

Ready to enter the hay bale maze

Lola was a little worried the first time through

Holes in the roof combined with the hay dust in the air made for the most amazing lighting

Lola walks through the "laser beams"

Wrong way Lola!

One last cheesy photo board

Playing amongst the pumpkin boxes

We had such a fun time visiting the pumpkin farm. It's definitely one of our new favourite traditions and something we'll look forward to doing every year while we live in America. 

Mt Diablo

Please come back

Our pumpkins will sit aside for a few weeks while we visit Canada for visa renewal purposes (again!). The girls can't wait to carve them when we get home.