From Muddy Puddles to Streams of Living Water: the Pumpkin Patch

This past Sunday we drove down to Bismarck for our annual trip to Papa's Pumpkin Patch! We love heading down there each year to search for our perfect pumpkin to take home with us. The kids have a blast running all around and playing on all the slides and hay bail mazes and riding the train! It's was a perfect family get-away for us this year. After we had a nice lunch at the Olive Garden, which is a must treat for us when we're down in Bismarck and a stop and shop at Lowes we headed down the hill to Papa's Pumpkin Patch. As we got down into the beautiful Fall colored woods we began to wonder why there weren't very many cars heading the same way we were, every year prior there had been a line of cars headed to the pumpkin patch. We kept on driving towards our destination and when we finally turned on the road that takes you to it we began to notice the dikes and flooded home. Again, we remembered the tragedy of the flooding that took place in so many areas of our country this year. It was such a sad sight as we pulled up to the entrance of the farm where Papa's Pumpkin Patch had always been and see the destruction from the flood. My first thought was, "How am I going to explain this one to the kids?!" But thankfully we noticed a sign that informed us they had moved the Pumpkin Patch to a new location!! Whew, problem solved! So we headed to the temporary new location, with grateful hearts that they decided to still put it on this year despite the flood and we enjoyed a fun family afternoon together!

And I can't leave out our classic baby story that brought much laughter and smell to our day. Yeah, I'm sure you are guessing correctly. I had planned out our outfits to all match for pictures and my one request to my infant was that we avoid a 'blow out' today. Any other day I can deal with it but please, just get through this day without incident. Apparently she didn't get the memo because not 20 minutes into our day of being at the pumpkin patch does Nathan come to me and say, "She smells like she went to the bathroom." I didn't notice any soiled clothes and I thought 'oh good! Let's change her quickly!' But as he handed her to me it was then that, yes it's true, I burst into laughter at the sight of my poor husband covered down the front of his shirt in Janessa poo and he just takes the moment in stride and informs me that Janessa is just making up for lost time!! HAHA! And really, I shouldn't have been laughing, maybe I had to so I wouldn't cry. No more perfect family photos... as if that was going to happen anyway. Well you can just imagine the scene around us as others noticed our predicament. I set out to clean her up as Nathan tried his best to clean himself up with wipes, our one consolation being that his shirt was dark! And why didn't I think to bring Nathan a change of clothes?! Anyways, thankfully Janessa's dress was salvageable and so was Nathan's, there was just a 'nice' little scent protruding from our family, Nathan continued to hold Janessa for the rest of our time there to hide the stain on his shirt, and we continued to have a fun day despite our little mishap. Here are some photos from our eventful day together, I hope you enjoy!