1 Pumpkin, 2 Pumpkin, 3 Pumpkin, 4

Did we really go to 4 pumpkin patches this year? Yes, we kind of did. Our area of NC has no shortage of pumpkin patches with corn mazes, corn pits, hay rides, train rides, pony rides, tunnels, and more. And we definitely have a few favorites.

Noah with his loot.

We ended up at the first patch a little by accident. Green Acres opens at 11am on Sundays and we were looking for something to do on a beautiful Sunday morning in late September. So we decided to check it out. Noah had a lot of fun here, but honestly I didn't like this farm. You don't get a pumpkin with admission, which was $10, and we had to pay more inside for all the activities Noah wanted to do like ride the ponies and ride the train. We were able to ride the hayride with our admission price, but the tractor driver was an hour late to the farm that day.

Green Acres is Noah's dream, though. He could not wait to ride that little train, the ponies, and sit in all the 'diggers.' Though we had read enough seasonal books for him to also beg to pick out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch so he was a bit disappointed we left without one.

Our second pumpkin excursion was almost exactly a month later, at the Museum of Life & Science Pumpkin Express. This was a lot of fun and definitely worth the $12 admission price with our museum membership. We got to ride the train out to the pumpkin field, pick a pumpkin (finally!), decorate it, and sling shot a few pumpkins. Noah even got to sit in the engineers spot before we rode the train back to the station.

Posing around hay bales proves to be awkward for us.

We actually hit up our favorite pumpkin patch twice... in two days. We had plans to go to Gaynard Hills Farm with friends and the Editor's sister on the Sunday before Halloween, but then Hurricane Sandy threatened to rain out our plans. We only had one little tiny pumpkin, we were less than a week from Halloween and this was our favorite pumpkin patch last year. I really wanted Noah to be able to go even if we got rained out on Sunday so Friday afternoon after nap, I made a quick decision that Noah and I would go by ourselves. We were disappointed to leave the Editor at home working, but we needed pumpkins and I really wanted Noah to have the experience again. So off we went and we had a lot of fun!

Lucky for us, it didn't rain all weekend, even though the forecast was pretty dreary. We were able to keep our plans with friends and family to go back to Gaynard on Sunday, making it our fourth stop. Noah had just as much (if not more) fun the second time around.

More awkward posing & this is also when I decided my hair is way too blonde.

What did we do with our pumpkins? Noah painted one on Monday when Sandy actually came through NC.

And we carved 4 of them.