Visiting the Country Barn

The Saturday before Joshua's birthday (Saturday, September 13), we went to the Country Barn as a family. We had a free pass that Joshua earned from the library's summer reading program that was about to expire, and we also purchased a BOGO coupon, so we only needed to buy one ticket to go with Joshua's voucher for the whole family to get in. We had asked our babysitter to watch Ryan, but a half hour after she was supposed to show up, she still hadn't arrived and didn't answer her cell phone, so we ended up taking him along.

When we got there, the older boys road these tricycle-type things along a path while Ryan enjoyed the corn table.

 Then the kids and Daddy climbed the hay bails.

I had booked Joshua's 7th birthday party at the Country Barn, based on a review from Trip Advisor. We gave Joshua some options for his birthday, and he wanted to invite his school friends to a party so that's what we did this year. But I hadn't ever been there before, so I wanted to get a feel for what things were like before being responsible for a bunch of kids his age.

 The boys enjoyed being spiders on this net.

 Then they each took a turn riding the pony.

I was picturing this place being bigger from the sounds of their marketing, but there wasn't as much to do as I was expecting. It was still fun, though, and much better than trying to do a party at our house and keeping everyone entertained. There was a limit to the number of people we could invite, though, which made it a little bit tricky.

The older boys enjoyed the tractor ride. Ryan wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, he'd rather have been napping. But, unfortunately, our babysitter flaked out on us (she did tell us later that her mom had fallen and she went to check on her. But all it would have taken was a phone call to let us know that BEFORE we waited around for her. Sigh).

We paid $1 extra to have food to feed the animals. There wasn't much of a petting zoo, so we ended up bringing a lot of it home with us.

 Ryan and the other kids DID enjoy the straw tunnel and played there for a long time.

The kids enjoyed exploring the tractor (which you can see in the background of the picture below) and the swings.

Then we went to the pumpkin patch (for our own fun; we knew this was NOT something we were doing with our big party). The hayride was free, and you paid something like .45 per pound for the pumpkin you picked.

The guy warned us not to pick a pumpkin unless we were sure it was the one we wanted. The boys carefully explored and really wanted the perfect one. They'd point to one and we'd say "not that one" if it had a funny side or something. Shawn went to look at one and the stem snapped away. The guy said we didn't have to buy it, but Shawn felt like it was the right thing to do just to take it. We got THE most lopsided pumpkin ever, but we had to giggle. It was good enough, as we were basically just paying for the experience anyway.

I snapped a picture of the boys with their pumpkin on the wagon ride. Ryan cried on the way to the pumpkin patch until I told him how brave he was. He agreed, and another family fell in love with our little man for overcoming his fear. :) :) :)

After the wagon ride, we made the mistake of stopping in the sweet shop (where you have to pay for the pumpkins) and we also bought a pumpkin roll (YUM!). It had been a fun day, even though our poor little Schnook was exhausted. We were looking forward to Joshua's birthday party!