A Pumpkin Patch Fourth Birthday for Joshua

Today is Joshua's birthday.  As we've done in the past, we decorated his door.  He was surprised to see it and thought if was fun to try to find a way to get out.

We went to the early church service so we could go to "the pumpkin patch".  This is not really something I'd heard of until a few years ago, but it seems every family in KC with small kids goes to "the pumpkin patch".  Apparently most are not actually pumpkin patches, but are more like festivals with all sort of activities that also offer the ability to buy some pumpkins.  Some actually have an actual pumpkin patch where you can pick them off the vine or whatever (I've only ever seen the one from Charlie Brown, so I'm not sure what it's like in a non-animated world), but many don't.  Anyway, the one we decided to go to was at Faulkner's Ranch in Lee's Summit.
 
This particular one had a petting zoo of uncommon animals.  They had alpacas, a camel, burros, miniature horses, and miniature brahma bulls, in addition to the standard goats.

But the highlight was definitely this white alpaca, whom I can only assume bit his handler or pooped on his handler's shoes or did something to cause them to give him this terrible haircut.  He seemed humiliated.  Poor guy.
After the animals, we went out to the main activity area.  Hannah found a slide, which always makes her happy.  She went down it over and over again.  Joshua found a digger, which we've seen at other parks in the past, and it's always one of this favorite things.  If only he had one of his own to play with at home... (That's called foreshadowing, kids!)

There was a magician named Reggie Regg performing.  He was really good.  At first the kids just watched, but soon Clara wanted to be in on it and wanted to sit "with the kids".  I found a chair for her, and soon Joshua wanted to join.  They sat and watched the show and laughed, especially Clara.  Afterward, they got to hold the bird and pet Randy the Rabbit.  Randy is either the laziest, most indifferent rabbit ever, or he's just resigned himself to having to sit on that box forever while a million kids take their turns petting him.

We then went home and did presents.  Joshua got some stomp rockets and a related book, and he was excited (apparently he had seen rockets in one of his cartoons) and insisted I go with him right away to play rockets, but that will have to wait for another day.  He then opened his construction worker outfit that we got him, and this was more of a hit than we expected.  He was really excited to dress up as a construction guy.  He then noticed that there were a lot of those bagged air packets lying around, so he put on my shoes and tried to stomp them, with no real success, much to his disappointment.

But then he opened his construction worker outfit and found that it included a hammer.  He was elated about this, and while admiring how sharp it was (it's not all that sharp), he realized this was the solution to his air packet problem and immediately proceeded to hammer (with the claw) every single air packet, popping each one to his delight.

He modeled his outfit for us, with both his beloved hammer and saw (here he attempts to saw his own helmet, which is not a productive task).  But then he got his last gift, which was his own digger!  I think it's actually an excavator, and that's what he calls it (well, "escavator").  He drove it around the house pretending to dig and scoop dirt before he realized that's dumb because there's actual dirt outside, so why are we wasting time inside?

So I took him outside to let go to work in the mulch around the trees.  Thankfully I'm not picky about my landscaping.  He insisted on wearing the full outfit, including the goggles, and he spent a lot of time out there until it was time to go to AWANA.  After AWANA and the girls' naps, we had his birthday dinner, which was, of course, McDonald's per his request.

We then finished with his birthday cake.  Meghan made it, complete with the multiple colored layers.  It looked great and tasted wonderful.  And finally Joshua shows off his new age with four fingers.  It was a packed day, but it was great fun.