Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday we went up to Olive Branch to visit Matt and Aimee and their two children, Mikaiyah and Camden. We stayed in during the afternoon to watch the MSU vs. South Carolina game (ugh...) and then decided to go out for the early evening to a pumpkin patch and corn maze which was in between Olive Branch and Collierville. Here are the kids who just got out of the car. They were very excited...
Kaiyah showing Jo how to throw grass and dirt. Fun!
This was such a cute little area for pictures - they kids obliged!
Matt, Aimee, and Camden (you can barely see his little head, but he hung with us the whole time - albeit asleep). We're on the tractor ride to the corn maze here. It was not very far from the house, so this part was fun enough for the kids, but not uncomfortably long. Jo didn't even flinch about the tractor or the hay or anything. Jo's really good about doing EVERYTHING if Kaiyah does it...
Here is a picture of the corn maze. We decided - being the intelligent people we are - to solve the maze BEFORE we went in AS WELL as take a picture of it to have on our camera. This SAVED us.

We had a map of the maze which could only be revealed by red glasses - and certain parts of the maze had "checkpoints" where you could look at the map under red plastic. At one point, we got to a checkpoint - and since we were there, we decided to check ourselves. We knew we were mostly through the maze, but wanted to go ahead and see what the map said. Turns out - the map they printed to give to people was WRONG. Like, VERY wrong. We kept trying and trying to figure it out. Up until this point, I had been navigating using the picture on the camera. I eventually told our group we were just going to keep going using OUR own picture, not the one on the paper. LUCKILY, the picture we took was correct and we got in and out of the maze in about 45 minutes - only going the wrong way ONCE. (The maze isn't small - it was 8 acres - but certainly didn't feel that big when we were in there.)
Here are our brave warriors entering the corn maze.

We kept passing a large family (in numbers, not size) who had been in the maze for untold amounts of time. In fact, they were attempting to exit the entrance when we were coming in and then turned around. When we passed this family AGAIN near the end (they were a row over, but could see us through the corn), we heard a comment from one of the adults, "Let's follow the Mississippi State people..." I didn't really realize until later that his comment was probably a backhanded insult - being that we were in a corn maze and apparently Mississippi State people are comfortable there.... (maybe it's true - we did get through the maze quickly...). Anyway - those people cut through the corn and followed us out. Cheaters. We're pretty sure they were Ole Miss fans as well - being as one of their sons was wearing a Giants jersey and named "Eli". Perfect.
Dancing... they STILL had energy even after all the romping through the corn.
Look how BIG they are!

Family!
There were several "cornhole" games laid out at the fun zone. There was also a place to grind corn, play in the sand, there was a slide into a huge trough of corn, saddles on bales of hay, a place where you could practice "roping" hay cows, an area where you pumped water and raced little ducks, and a pumpkin patch behind all of that. There was SO much to do - and most of it would have been appropriate for the girls to both do. We really enjoyed our time there.
Teaching Jo how to play the game, she wanted to climb up the board and drop it in. Cheater!
They got their pumpkins! Jo also picked out a pumpkin for Camden... Sweet girls! :)