A Park that's a Farm

We made plans, big plans, to visit a pumpkin patch a few weeks ago. Riley told everyone we saw about her big weekend plans - she was going to pick a 'punkin'.........and then I called the pumpkin patch to check on prices and they broke the news.......the pumpkins weren't ready - they were still green and they wouldn't let anyone into the fields for at least 2 more weeks. Yikes, didn't they know that my sweetie had been counting on this all week!

At this point I was kind of scrambling for something fun to do - and I kind of wanted it to be something new, not the zoo where she'd been before, when I discovered that the Springfield park board has a farm - really a working farm that you can go visit. Joey gave me the weirdest look when I told him about this, you could tell he was thinking "woohoo" since farms are nothing new, but I was pretty excited about all it had to offer.

Showing Papa Dub some John Deere tractor love.

They had all kinds of animals (minature horses, cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, cats), a fake cow you can milk, one of the coolest playgrounds ever, tractors, and it was free. There were several other things that we didn't have time to really check out - a fishing pond where you can really fish with a cane pole, a bird observation area, a gift shop, a walking trail and I'm sure lots more. Overall it was a really fun day.

Cayman posing like a champ -
Riley bonked her head on the spoke there and wouldn't go back

The kids (Riley and her cousin Cayman) thought it was quite funny that one of the farm cats was in the pen with the goats.

They thought the pigs were pretty gross and didn't understand why they had smooshed their food bowl.

They learned that milking a cow was pretty hard work (although daddy was pretty good at it). They both enjoyed the cows running around - because they were totally playing tag you know. Riley thought the chickens were very loud, and big (they really were like twice the size of her Papa's chickens). Finally, they were both super excited to check out the playground - and of course a few slide races and jumping off the hay bales was a necessity. Bass Pro and lunch at McDonald's - you know kid heaven here on earth - were just a bonus.

This is my tired little munchkin on the way home - I think we wore her out!