We have been very fortunate to find a wonderful playgroup that gets together sometimes 2-3 times a week. The kids are kindergarten- and preschool-aged and are mostly boys, though on this day school was out so older siblings got to accompany us as we traveled to Gervais to visit Bauman's Farm (just south of Woodburn, a little more south of Portland; just over an hour's drive from Corvallis). This place is HUGE!! There was so much to do, much of it physical - perfect for a group of amped up kids. I didn't even capture pictures of the petting farm, the playground, or the fort. (There is a shot of the seed bin, but you'll have to make it to the end before you get to see it since it comes with a story that overlapped to today!) The farm had several "barns" set up around the farm with lots of these black tubes set up as tunnel slides.
Here the hay maze is just a ploy to find your way to the ladder so you can slide your way out!
The goats had a great environment set up for them, with the elevated walkway (which the kids were crazy about!) and a large, gnarly tree stump to climb. Happy goats.
Again, another barn with bales of hay to climb but the best part was the giant tunnel slide set up under the decorated hay bales. (Are they still "bales" when they're rolled like this?)
It might be hard to see, but look to the upper left: that's the giant tube they got to slide down! And if you look even more closely, you can see the very steep ladder they all had to climb (over and over and over!!) in order to zoom down this slide! On the right you can see how the hay bales are set up for climbing.
This was probably the favorite of all the barns. There was an obstacle course set up here, with angled bales of hay and old tires to climb.
You can't tell from a still photo, but they connected this tunnel with a motor so that it was continuously spinning! Obviously a big hit.
Once you traveled through the spinning tunnel you climbed yet another ladder in order to enjoy the slide of your choice. Everyone had to try out the rolling tubes, but usually just did it once. Apparently it's not too comfortable, and rather bumpy!
You can just see Joshua at the top of this stack here. I have no picture of him climbing up because this is where he was when I found him...Look away for a moment and he's off. By the time I caught up with him he'd already scaled the first wall and was actually about to slide down the plywood on his bottom until we suddenly caught on and advised him to take the tires down! And as steep as this looks, there was actually another one set up that was practically vertical it was so steep. Thankfully that one didn't interest Joshua at all. :)
Yes, you astute audience, you - in order for me to have taken this picture, I did actually climb up the tire wall... (the things we do for the sake of a cute picture!)
These swings were great! They were anchored up high within the rafters and they actually swung around while swinging back and forth! The kids LOVED these.
Boys on a tractor - life's good.
Yes, yet another slide. I guess they all start to look the same after a while, but trust me, each new slide was a new thrill for these kids. This one was part of a fort of hay bales, with a secret and dark tunnel surrounding it. The "jail" picture below is part of that tunnel area.
Joshua, Cadence, Solomon, Madison, Kieran (standing), Ashton, Kyler, Isaac, Allison, Garrett
And here's the story you've all been waiting for! Many pumpkin patches have what's called a "corn box", filled with large, dried feed corn that's a blast to play in. Here they had a seed box, filled with some kind of grain (wheat?), cleverly covered with a screen to discourage the natural urge to gather up as much seed as you can and thrust it into the air with all your might. So the kids sat in it and filled their shirts with it (one of the moms is pregnant so the boys had a great time holding the shirt closed at the bottom and filling it from the neck, creating a baby belly), and Joshua's activity of choice, rolling around like there were ants in his pants. He thoroughly enjoyed this for about 20 minutes, then moved on to something else. And this morning (you seasoned parents have probably already guessed where I'm going with this), someone woke up with an ear ache. Strange...no fever, no other symptoms...I'm going to take a wild guess and suspect a case of seed-in-the-ear here. My cursory glance with a flashlight told me nothing, of course, so off to the doctor we went. I told him my theory, and he kind of looked at me like, "silly mom - let ME do the diagnosing here" and got out his magic tools to peer inside. And lo and behold! something was in there! The doctor was really great about it, actually. He got a squirt bottle with a little tube attached, and wrapped Joshua up in some baby blankets. Joshua was no fan of the water squirting in his ear, but after several good squirts, out came the culprit. We actually brought it home to show Daddy, but we threw away before I got the idea to photograph it in Joshua's hand. (For what besides this blog, I don't know, but still!) So there is no visual for this story, but imagine a dried piece of barley, or a short, blunt piece of dried rice. The doctor said it was wedged right up to the eardrum so it was no surprise that it was painful. On the one hand, I'm surprised it got all the way in there! But on the other hand, knowing just how much he rolled around in that stuff, I'm truly surprised there was only one...and only in the ear. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment