A Beautiful Day in the Gilcrease Orchard

 The kids have been begging me to take them to the pumpkin patch but I wasn't feeling the carnival style vibes and the expensive, pay for everything you do atmosphere. No, I wanted the real experience. A huge beautiful farm with a REAL patch full of pumpkins ripe for the picking. Oh and lets throw in an apple orchard to wander around just for fun ;).

Sadly, this was supposed to be a family adventure but Josh was having tummy troubles similar to what put him in the hospital last December. So he had to sit this one out and I was bummed. Like trying hard not to cry the whole drive to the orchard kind of bummed. You see, Josh and I work opposite schedules now. I work weekends and he works week days and we meet each other at some point for church on Sunday. At least that's how it feels. I take the kids on most of our fun outings alone and I show him pictures of the moments he missed later. This structure has been so hard on me and sometimes I feel like a single Mom, but it is what gets us by with minimal daycare so it's just what we've got to do.

Anyways, to cut the sob story short, my heart perked up once we got to the orchard and were greeted by the delicious smell of homemade apple donuts hot off the grease (oh my gosh they were mouth watering!). We got ourselves donuts and ate to our hearts content! They were seriously the best donuts I've ever eaten!

After our tummies were full and our moods more perky, we grabbed a wheelbarrow and I let the kids run free. They spent hours pushing each other around in that wheelbarrow, picking apples, finding sticks, and just enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. THAT is the experience I was looking for!! :)

There was also a hay maze that Austin thought was AWESOME! He was so excited to be the leader and find a way out for us! Such a cutie :) Just look how proud he is in the picture.....

 We could have played in the orchard all day long but we had church at 1pm and our time was running out! So we headed over to the pumpkin patch to find us some big ol' pumpkins! Austin had a blast rolling his pumpkin around over mounds of dirt and Evie was having a blast just running around in general. I just sat back with our wheelbarrow watching them and feeling the calm happy feeling of peace that always comes from watching my babies in their element. :)