Finding our inner farm boys...

This Saturday we took an adventure to Denver Downs Farm in Anderson, SC. It is about a 45 minute drive from our house. We had talked about checking this place out all week, after a recommendation from someone I work with as well as someone Tom works with. I looked at the website and saw that aside from a pick your own pumpkin patch (our primary reason for going) there would be a lot more activities for the kids to enjoy. We decided that instead of rushing around in the morning, we would wait until after Will's nap to head out. We packed up a picnic dinner for the boys and left by 3:30-3:45pm. Originally we thought we would be back in the car by 5pm. We packed the dinner-just in case. Well it is a good thing we did....

Once we arrived we were pleasantly surprised at the low number of people for a Saturday afternoon. Then again, Clemson was playing at home at 3:30. :) There is one admission fee and then you can enjoy all the activities. There was hardly a wait for anything. There were tons of games to try-corn ball (sort of like volleyball but with a HUGE beach ball), farm football and the corn cannon (a cannon that fires tennis balls into a field using an air compressor)

Jack doesn't even know where to begin!

Giant jumping pillow! 

There is a HUGE corn maze that is a replica of The Greenville Hospital emblem. We decided to give it a try. It was very tricky and Will and Jack quickly got bored as we kept going round and round in seeming circles. I had to pee and I thought we would never reach the end. Will kept climbing into the corn stalks (off the path) and pulling off the leaves. Jack was talking on a pretend "iPhone"(a piece of a corn stalk) to his best friend Mike telling him how we were lost. My arms were killing me from carrying Will! Finally, Tom spotted an outlet through the stalks to the outside of the maze. We escaped. Maybe we will try again when the boys are a little older. Upon further investigation into the map of the maze we were glad that we "gave up", it would have taken at least an hour to finish. I wondered the whole time we were "lost" inside-how did they make this to match that emblem. Fascinating! It was a little cool to be "lost" beneath the corn stalks. They were all about 3 feet taller than Tom and I. You could hear other people, on other paths, but not see them. I bet it is super spooky at night. There are goats and a HUGE pig you can feed. There are duck races where you pump old fashion water pumps to push little rubber duckies across these tubes filled with water. There is a zip line and a huge slide too.


 Jack and I tried out the very bouncy, jumping pillow! I loved it, but Jack was a little scared.

Will wanted to be part of the fun too. 

We found a huge spider web to climb in...

I decided that Tom was to carry the camera because I am NEVER in any of the pictures. Although I am usually not happy with how I look in the pictures, I was happy to be shown having fun with my two wonderful boys. 

Next, we rode on the cow train. Jack in Rosie and Will and I in Lulu Belle.

 After riding on the cow train we checked out a little kid play area with a playhouse and ride on toys and pumpkin bowling. There was a big barn with huge hay stacks and rope swings. Jack was too little to try it out, but other kids were climbing and swinging and plunging down into the hay. We found a big sandbox that was filled with dry corn kernels. Jack and Will both liked filling up buckets and dumping them out, running there hands through the corn and laying in it. Even after we left the "corn box" we left a little trail of corn from our shoes.

Here are some shots of Jack running over the tops of the hay bales.

As dinner time was quickly approaching and everyone was hot and hungry and starting to get cranky we decided to start to wrap things up. We bought a few bottles of water, loaded the kids in a wagon and headed into the patch to pick our pumpkins. Jack and Will guzzled down the water (Will wore more than he drank) and changed back from a little crabby to more pleasant. They enjoyed resting their legs during the ride into the patch. 

We picked out 2 medium size (and way over priced) pumpkins and even though we wanted to try out the hayride, we knew we were on borrowed time at this point. It was after 6pm and we had to get dinner into these boys before we had 2 major meltdowns. I had left the diaper bag and the food in the car, so we decided to just pack them up and have a car picnic as we drove back to Greer. There were plenty of covered picnic tables and there were concessions as well but we knew that the boys had had enough. I then tortured them for one last picture session on an old tractor at the front entrance.

Ah brotherly love (please note how wet Will's shirt is). 

No one wants to look at me.

"Let me show you how to drive this thing.."

Sometimes I am so torn at places like this-if I had the stroller or our wagon, we would have had the food and a place for them to take turns resting, would we have stayed longer? We would have been able to pull them through the maze too. I know in reality, Tom or I would have ended up pulling an empty wagon while the other chased the kids and all the while we would have wished we had just left it in the car. In the end, I know we spent the right amount of time for us at Denver Downs. As we left, Jack threw a classic "I'm having too much fun to leave" fit. Both parts embarrassing and satisfying (in that we know he had a good time). I know it was fueled more by hunger and being tired than anything else. We saw a lot, we did a lot and we left a little to do on a second trip. A lot of the activities were geared for older kids anyway. I am so happy that we ventured out to check this place out. It was a beautiful way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening.  

We packed everyone back into the car. Dumped out the last of the corn kernels from our shoes. Washed our hands and I found myself perched in my "favorite" (note the sarcasm) spot in the car-wedged between my two littles in the back. I fed them from the lunchbox until there was nothing left. We talked about our day and what we would do with our pumpkins at home. We arrived home just as it was getting dark. I washed down my two little farm boys and put them to bed. What a fantastic day!