The Harvest Festival

Much as I dislike crowds and waiting in lines, I really wanted to take Violet to the Harvest Festival at Ardenwood Farm this year. This second round of the holiday season with her is going to be so much more fun, because she's so much more aware of everything than she was at this time last year, so I was excited for the pumpkin patch and the petting zoo, etc.

And I think she did have fun. What I realized, though, is that I should have brought my stroller, first of all, and second of all, that we probably could have gone to a park for free and she would have had just as much fun. But, mommy and daddy wanted photo ops. Hehe. 

Piggy!

Piggy!

We started out at the animals. Bunnies and cows are animals she's seen in her books, but never up close. She kept calling all of them piggy, though. Ironic that we didn't see any actual pigs.

Piggy!

   

We did some wandering about and eventually met up with two of my mommy friends and their little ones, both of whom seemed better equipped to handle a full day at the farm -- a 9 year old and a baby in a stroller. I felt very unprepared. I finally put Violet on my shoulders, which seemed to keep her happy for the longest amount of time. She really just wanted to run loose and get in everyone's way. In theory, I didn't mind, but it was just crazy busy and there was all kinds of farm equipment and stuff laying around. And she's too full of energy to want to be constrained for very long.

So we soon parted ways with out friends again and headed over to the pumpkin patch, again, largely for the photo op, since we didn't want to take a pumpkin home just yet. Charmingly, her first instinct was to try to pick up the biggest pumpkin she could find. 

This one looks good!

I'll just sit here for a minute.

We did have to convince her to sit on one, and because I was following behind her and daddy, I kept only getting pictures of her back. Oh well, it's still cute.

The haystack was a big hit. She loves climbing things. Going up was relatively easy, though Daddy did have to help her get her footing on the less-than-stable hay. Going down was a bit more dangerous, and definitely required help.

Going up...

Trying to take the down step at a run, note the look of panic on Daddy's face.

She had such a fun time picking up rocks and sticks and falling in the dirt that Shawn and I were both commenting on what a little tom-boy she was. But she kept holding out her hand for me to brush off the dirt, so, clearly still a princess after all.

Dirty. Clean me, please.