There are many traditions that seem to form quickly with our family, especially with the holidays. I know this is partly influenced by Oakley and his tremendous desire to keep everything the exact same and completely predictable. We stumbled upon Pumpkinland by accident a few years ago and it is now on the Must-Do list for Halloween. Oakley and Eli both know that Pumpkinland opens on 1 October and they ask at least seven hundred million times a day when we are going to Pumpkinland as soon as we turn the calendar to October. This is why we usually end up going quite early in the month to kick off the Halloween season and to stop the endless questioning of when we will be going.
To most people over the age of twelve, Pumpkinland just looks like a law suit waiting to happen. It is located at a Garden Center that has to have existed since the beginning of time. Pumpkinland consists of the following- a small corn maze created for younger kids that doesn't take hours to find your way out of (unless you're directionally challenged like most of the Beeson Family) that has silly Halloween jokes posted on signs throughout the maze that the boys laugh and laugh and laugh at (although I don't think they really understand any of them!); a walk through a pumpkin patch; seeing a few animals in their cages, like goats, chicken, bunnies, and ducks; a couple of inflatable slides; and the highlight of it all, a "spook alley" where you walk through the big barn where all of the fertilizer and such things are stored. To create the "spook alley", all of the bags of lawn and garden items are covered in black plastic. There are several Halloween inflatables along with many Christmas lawn-ornament type things (i.e. the white deer made out of wire and white Christmas lights) to see as you weave your way through the stacks of 50 pound bags. It is dark and the children feel quite brave after making it through the maze. I just feel light-headed from the overpowering smell of fertilizer!
Eli visits the bunny house.After a significant amount of time spent playing on the inflatable slides, the boys pick out a pumpkin and we're on our way. The boys are thrilled and I am grateful they are so happy about an activity that only cost $3 person. How many more years will Pumpkinland hold it's magic?
