All of a sudden, autumn is everywhere. The leaves on our crab apple tree turned gorgeous shades of red and yellow before a wild windstorm blew them away (woohoo - no raking!). I'm still experiencing vacation hangover, not ready to admit that we are no longer on Kauai, so I've been a little lax planning fall celebrations.
In
years past we've had fun at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Pumpkin Festival, and I just happened to check the website yesterday - lo and behold, it was taking place this weekend!
It's such a great event for kids - there are old tractors...
...hand-operated pumps...
Popcorn and candy-corn "monster hands" and Clif Kids fruit twists...
A giant jumping pillow...
...live music... (our friend Atlas is in the plaid shirt)
And, of course, PUMPKINS - 10 acres producing over 35,000 pumpkins each year. The pumpkin sale started Friday so the pickings were a little slim - 99% of the ones we walked past were either getting mushy or were already there.
Finally we found the perfect one (by perfect I mean perfectly asymmetrical and fairly blemished, but at least it wasn't mushy!).
There were also vendor booths and food stands - we stopped at the Children's Museum booth so the boys could roll balls down a giant marble run (note Ryan handing out balls to the other kids)...
... and photo ops (this was the best one out of twenty or so shots!).
We had a corn dog, grilled sweet corn and a giant glass of lemonade before packing up and saying goodbye to our friends. Ryan had been asking to ride on the tractor since before we even arrived there, so they were excited to catch a ride on the haywagon (pulled by a tractor) back to the parking lot.
