Pumpkin Picking 2014!

Continuing our family tradition for the THIRD straight year (2012, 2013), we headed to Linvilla Pumpkinland in October for Pumpkin Photos and a hayride!

Linvilla: October 2012 & 2013

I'm not sure if it was that Linvilla is growing rapidly in popularity or the weekend we chose (the first nice day after a lot of rain), but it was a madhouse there this year! We had to park at a satellite parking field (I never knew these existed there and we've been a lot of times!) and waited about an hour for the hay ride. While I love the photos of Nolan on the big mounds of pumpkins, I think we may try a smaller farm with a more traditional pumpkin patch field next year.



As per usual, Nolan was being his stubborn 2-year-old self and not wanting to pose for photos or even sit in the pumpkins very long. It was hard to get many non-blurry photos of him this year. He kept wanting to take the pumpkins out of the containers and bring them home :) Although the photos don't show it, he was in love with seeing so many pumpkins. He's been really into watching the Curious George "Halloween Boo Fest" movie, which features pumpkin patches so he was excited to see so many pumpkins in real life!

No smiles for the camera! (even though he LOVES pumpkins!)

I want that pumpkin!

I'll take this one please. It's as big as ME!

Trying to reach on his tippy toes

We found some pumpkins his size and he wanted to take them all home!

More please?

Nolan did amazingly well tolerating the long line for the hay ride. Even Joe and I were getting frustrated in line, but Nolan happily watched the hay rides come and go with people and requesting certain tractors for his ride.

At least one of them was entertained while waiting in line ;)

Finally our turn!! It was a gorgeous day for a hay ride!

My boys holding hands - heart melted.

Riding into the woods - still won't let go of Daddy's finger.

Love the wooded view in addition to the farm tour

Nolan definitely did not want to get off the hay ride - he loved it so much that he didn't want it to end. We did manage to get a photo with the same "How Tall this Fall" height measurement after the ride - Nolan has grown about half a foot over the past year! He's just under 3ft tall now.

6 inches grown over a year! 2.5ft at 1.5yrs to 3ft at 2.5yrs. I think Joe stayed the same height ;)

We didn't hang around too much longer after the hayride since it was so crowded, but we still had a great time (Nolan talked about the hayride for weeks afterwards), and we got our arbitrary "pumpkin patch" photos for the year. It's hard to believe that next year we'll have two little munchkins to take photos of!