Fabulous Fall Continued...

The amazing autumn weather that I wrote about here just keeps on coming so we are more than happy to spend our days outside enjoying it!  And we did just that this weekend.  On Saturday, Grandpa and Grandma L. came down for a fun little visit so we decided to take them to the Harvest Festival at our favorite zoo.  Down on the farm, there were many fall festivities to enjoy.  The kids started off with some face painting - though I guess technically on this day it was arm painting.

 

  

 With autumn adorned arms, T and Z next tried their hand at apple pressing.

Then we visited some of the farm animals.  After initially getting a bit startled by an overly friendly "kid", Z really enjoyed grooming this more mellow goat.

We next enjoyed some blue grass music and ice cream treats,

followed by a few runs through the hay bale maze,

 

and then a walk through scarecrow alley.  These were our favorites...

 

No big surprise here - Z really liked the ballerina character,

 

as well as this lovely butterfly.

 

T's favorite, on the other hand, was this penguin (he took this photo).

After leaving the farm area, we also visited many of our other favorite zoo animals.  We just happened to pass by the camels as they were having a check-up from a couple of the zoo keepers.  We hadn't ever seen people so close to them before.

 

We ended our visit with an impromptu stop at the splash pad.  Who would have ever thought it would be warm enough to do this in OCTOBER?!  But with a high in the mid 80's, a quick little frolic definitely felt refreshing to these two munchkins.

 

Today's weather was pretty much a carbon copy of yesterday, so since T was invited to a birthday party after church for his good buddy E at a corn maze, we decided that we would stick around and let Z enjoy a few of the festivities after we dropped T off with his friends.

However, following her busy, no-nap Saturday at the zoo, Z didn't last a super long time.  Prior to the sleepies taking hold, though, she did have fun tromping in AND on this hay bale maze.

And the three of us also enjoyed meandering through the corn maze.  This year's maze was a space theme so from above, it had a space shuttle, a few planets and multiple stars carved out.  You can see an aerial view by clicking here.  Apparently, it's the largest corn maze in the Midwest - at least that's what "they" say.  I don't have any shots of T because we tried not to intrude on his "friend party", but upon his return home, he declared that this was "the best birthday party ever", so I guess that means he had an enjoyable afternoon, too.

Yes, indeedy!  We are love, love, LOVING this fabulous fall!