Super Sunday

It's not often we skip church.  Once in a while if we're all extremely tired, or someone's sick, but for the most part it never happens.  Our one odd exception tends to happen once in a while in October when we're running out of weekend days and we happen to get a Sunday with lovely weather.  Sometimes you just have to sacrifice one church day they'll probably forget in favor of family memories they'll talk about for years.

So, on Sunday morning, despite being tired from our cold tournament day, we headed out to Stokoe Farms for our annual visit.  It was supposed to be around 60 and partly cloudy, which sounded pretty good compared the 40s and rain that was in the extended forecast for future weekends.  Plus it was nice to know we could get it out of the way and not have to rely on weather or worry about things that might get scheduled in the meantime.  So, off we went!

As usual, we had a blast.  We started off with the hayride to get further into the property.  We figured we'd hit up things that get long lines as early as we could!

Of course, Jacob got sidetracked at the sports thing, which is always his favorite.  This year basketball was his focus!

Carter and I walked toward the slides, with a quick pit stop to see the peacocks...

I wish I could have gotten a picture of the female.  She's not as flashy but she was pretty!

...and feed the goats!

He pulled that can right over when Carter didn't crank it high enough!

Carter loved this random slide out in the soybean field.  That drop is apparently really dramatic as every kid had a reaction to it!  Carter did it over and over!

He then exhausted me by wanting to do the big slides over and over again.  We did the tube slide once, but then had to race on the racing slides probably a dozen times!  I wasn't cold anymore by the time we were in the midst of that!  I finally did let him do one round without me, so at least I caught this...



But then we were back at it, so here's a first-hand view!



After that we met back up with Craig and Jacob, and the boys ran off to do the slides together!

Not too often they want to do anything together!

The races were hotly contested!

After the boys slid for a while, I convinced Jacob to ride the Beeline with me!  It's my favorite thing there (and everyone else's, judging by the line), and I've been waiting for a kid to be ready.  Next year Carter will be, but this year Jacob got brave!  I had to try to capture it!

We checked out a few animals--no piglets this year, but I always love an intense moment with the emus...

We checked out the little goats and laughed as they tried to butt each other off the bridge...

We headed back around to the front and the boys climbed the hay bales.  This was the closest I could get to a brotherly love shot...

And I guess they're brothers, since this is what I got when I tried to take individual pics of each of them...

No alpacas this year, but the giant white camel was pretty cool...

Carter did a big slide while Jacob went to the jumping pillow.  Cool shot, I think...

We took a snack break, at which point the boys rediscovered the cow to "milk" (or to water, as Carter was more appropriately calling it).

Teamwork!

Ready for more fun, I convinced Carter to take one cheesy picture, because I'm not sure we've ever done this particular one before.

He and I rode the pedal go-karts and Jacob played some volleyball.  It was starting to get close to the time to leave, but we took a quick look at pumpkins on the way out.

Ahhh, Craig's phone camera being awesome again...

We figured we couldn't get through the line to pay in time, so we had to pass.  We were in a time crunch because it was time to get to Jacob's lacrosse practice, his last one before a little break.  I think the coach just wanted to get the kids together to go over what went well and what didn't the previous day, before their memories faded.  Since we were already south of town, we all went straight there.  Carter and I killed a little time getting lunch for the three of us (I brought a sandwich for Jacob).  By this time the weather was perfect.  I don't know why it wasn't like that the day before!  It was only around 60 degrees, but the sun was out and it was so pleasant.  Even without my coat I was warm!

I was worried about keeping Carter occupied the whole time, but his Wendy's Kid's Meal did the trick!

Captain Carter!

Look at all my jewels!

I took a little doze in the sun, and before we knew it, practice was over.  I wish I could say we had a blissful evening, but I botched dinner (I thought I had an ingredient and I didn't) and we ate late.  The next morning I realized that I never got to Carter's school folder and he had an optional project to do over the weekend.  Then we were running late so we missed the bus and I had to drop him off at school.  Suffice it to say the end of the weekend and the start of the week weren't as smooth as our Sunday fun, but I'm glad we had a good weekend since it seems the early fall weather has given way to the cooler stuff.  Boo.  But at least we got one of our most important fall activities checked off the list.  Now for Halloween costumes and pumpkins...one of these days...