The Great Pumpkin Festival ...

I'm just now starting to join the land of the living and venturing out of the house following the arrival of precious Caleb - having purposely taken these past weeks VERY easy. This Saturday I made it to the boys' soccer game in the morning AND, afterwards we went on a family date to the Desert Botanical Gardens to enjoy the Great Pumpkin Festival.

Apparently, the DBG puts on this fun fall community event every year complete with hayrides and free pumpkins for the kids. I can't tell you how excited I was to find out about it as we've really been wanting to do a family pumpkin patch day. I purchased a year family membership via a GREAT Groupon deal (seriously, $35!) a few months back that I had yet to activate as its been too hot to enjoy the garden yet. This was the perfect day to do so as all the activities were free for members. Woo hoo!

Daddy and Caleb waited in line for the hayride to the pumpkin patch while I had some time with the older boys doing crafts ...

Each boy decorated a foam pumpkin, made some cards with ink and stamps, and even got a few temporary (as in lasted 5 minutes) tattoos. So fun.

This is what Caleb did most of the morning - good little traveler that he was.

Hayride!

The boys were both pretty excited to go on their first hayride pulled by a tractor!

After the hayride, we exited into a maze that led us to the patch. Will LOVED it and went around and around with his Dad. Jared raced back in to find them.

The boys then got serious about picking out their pumpkins. Jared's been learning about farms and pumpkin patches at preschool, so Jared was READY! While waiting in line we saw some kids return with some seriously huge pumpkins so their Daddy instituted the rule that if you can't carry your own pumpkin, you can't have it. Jared, being the conscientious rule follower that he is - took this rule very seriously and tried out several pumpkins before finding one that he was confident he could carry.

Before leaving the patch, though Tim decided that the super small ones might not be too fun to carve later and let them pick some slightly larger pumpkins and even offered to help carry them back to the stroller. Actually, he had to talk Jared into picking a bigger one - Jared had to prove still that he could carry it. Check out the last picture of Jared with his new, larger pumpkin and just see that face of determination!

I have to admit it was a little funny to do "fall" in the middle of the desert when it was nearly 90 degrees out, but such is the life we lead here in Phoenix. ;-)

After we had our fill of the pumpkin fun and petting zoo, we headed into the garden to check out the butterfly pavilion. This time of year they have the beautiful Monarchs. As we walked through (after being given stern warnings not to damage the butterflies) I managed to snap this little treat - Will, well ... being Will.

Jared took this photo ...

We enjoyed a little picnic lunch in the shade of some Palo Verde trees and then packed up to head home.

All the while, Caleb slept. He was clearly unimpressed by all the fall festivities and beautiful desert landscape on his first trip to the Desert Botanical Garden.