For 18 bucks...

all I got was this less than stellar picture of my girls!



Well maybe it isn't too bad, it was taken under an intense amount of frustration and stress. And really who wants to smile and be pretty for a mom who is yelling, "Can't I just get one good damn picture of you girls in some pumpkins?"

Now I don't normally yell these sorts of things at my children, there is an explanation. See I was so excited to have a fun-filled family day. We were going to go to this pumpkin patch and take some pictures and have fun on the hay ride and the train ride and play on the big hay bales, etc... Steven and I took Alli and Abby to this place years ago and had a wonderful time, so I knew we were all going to have a great family outing. Plus the weather was outstanding, it was going to be the perfect day. High expectations on my part. Emma of course was grumbling as soon as we pulled in. Little did we know how right she was.



We paid our 3 bucks a person to get in, no big deal. We walked around a bit, took a few pictures and waited in line for the hay ride. When we finally got on the tractor, I realized that everyone but us had a ticket. When the boy came around to collect ours, I was confused and asked where the tickets were handed out. He pointed over yonder, I told the family not to move, I would run over and get our tickets really fast. I just figured it was a one ride per person kind of deal. I was wrong. You had to pay 2 dollars a ticket to go on the hay ride. Needless to say I was not paying 12 bucks for some tractor to pull us around for 5 minutes in a field. Steven saw the look on my face when walking back to the tractor and told the girls it didn't look like a hayride was in our future.

Of course then they wanted to ride the train, but that required 2 tickets per person, or 4 bucks. Heck they even wanted to charge for the kids to go down the giant inflatable slide! And of course you couldn't get out of there with a pumpkin costing less than 5 dollars. So this is where the frustration comes from. Because while I am all for people making a buck, this little establishment run by Farmer Ben Dover was just pure extortion. When we came before none of these things cost extra. I am by no means cheap but 18 bucks just to walk through the gate, where mind you, the girl collecting our money failed to tell us that everything else cost extra. Nice little scam. It would have cost us upwards of 80 dollars to do everything we wanted at an itty-bitty pumpkin patch. We've spent less getting into a theme park.

So yes, I got a little pissy, took it out on my children, just trying to get a shot or two, but hard to get one with all the unsuspecting morons walking around. None of these people had obviously experienced the joy of Celina where your entrance fee gets you a petting zoo, as many hayrides as you want, multiple fabulous photo ops, and a FREE pumpkin.

We left, and with the money we saved by avoiding all the extras, we had a great lunch at Lupe Tortilla's and a much needed margarita to boot. Afterwards we went by Kathryn's school which was selling pumpkins. Everyone was much happier now,


yes much happier.


Except Kathryn, she was struggling just a bit!


In the afternoon we went to our church's Fallejuah festival where everything was FREE and had a great time! The girls really loved the trunk or treating and we are already loaded down with bunches of candy. And I didn't stress about taking pictures here. I mean I really just want my girls to have a good time no matter where we go and maybe sometimes they get a bit irritated when I am always saying "Smile"!


But for 18 bucks, I did just want one good picture. And this cheeky grin, well this is just priceless!