YMCA Fall Festival

The Brentwood YMCA had their Fall Festival tonight.  It's free and open to the public so we made sure to get there right when it started to get as much in as we could before it got crazy crowded (which it eventually did).

I took the boys running on the greenway first and then met up with Suzy and her friend Jen that I met yesterday.  After getting our free shirts, we did the train ride first.  It was a short ride along the greenway but the boys still loved it.

Chase, Carter, me, and Rylan:

Next we did face painting.  Amazingly both Chase and Carter got their face painted (usually they both do their hands).

My camera battery died and I didn't have my extra battery with me so I had to resort to my crappy phone camera (I'm up for renewal so hopefully my next phone will be better!).

Carter loved his spider and ghost.  Rylan would have none of it though.

After waiting in line for 10 minutes for popcorn, we were told the machine was broken.  Carter was very disappointed.  Brian showed up then and we went to get some free pizza instead.  Instead of giving us each a slice, we were given a box with a large Papa John's cheese pizza - PERFECT!

While consuming our entire pizza (mostly by the kids), we waited in line for one of the bounce houses.

By this time the lines for everything were super long so we decided to head out.  And I was freezing - it wasn't that cold but my clothes were still wet from my run.

On the way out we visited the firemen and policemen.  Carter even got his picture with a fireman!

The policemen were the same ones that were at Home Depot a week ago and they recognized us.  But they still gave us more free stuff.  We have collected a lot of random stuff over the last week.  This is only about half of it ...

The shirts though that they were giving out tonight were pretty nice ...

And since I was downloading pictures from my camera, this is one from Tuesday that I took at River Park.  After school I took the boys there for my run and to play on the playground and there were a couple of firetrucks in the parking lot that were open to visitors.  We have definitely been getting our fill of firetrucks this week!

THD Kids Workshop

After Carter's soccer game last Saturday, we headed over to Home Depot for the Kids Workshop.  It's fire prevention month (I think) so on top of building a fire truck, the kids got to see a real one and a police car.  They also got to get a bag full of goodies from some policemen and get their face (or hand) painted.  Rylan refused but Carter let the girl paint a fire truck on his hand.

With soccer it's been hard for us to get to Home Depot and Lowe's lately for the workshops but the kids are still great with a hammer!

Afterwards we went to Culver's for burgers.  Carter was proud to show off his new junior officer badge.

And Rylan just wanted to make silly faces.

Lucky Ladd Farms

Today I took the boys to Lucky Ladd Farms.  We met Suzy (with Riley, Chase, & Hutch) and her friend (Jen) who also has 3 kids.  We spent 4 hours at the farm (gotta get our money's worth!).  It was a lot of fun however it was CROWDED!  There were dozens of school groups and our county had no school today for parent-teacher conferences.  We still managed not to lose anyone and because there is so much to do there, we didn't have to wait to do any of the activities.

We entered the farm through the barn and Carter tried out milking the fake cow.

While waiting for Suzy and Jen to arrive, I tried to get some photos of the boys with the fall decorations and pumpkins.

 

Rylan was having none of it though!

So on we went.  The boys wanted to feed the animals first but the school groups had taken over that areas so we decided to do that last after they had left.

This is Bunnyville.  I'm guessing these are fancy rabbit houses???

 They didn't have rabbits in them, but Carter had to check them all to make sure.

 Carter is king of the tire pile :)

The corn box is always fun.

Especially when you get mom to bury you!

There was corn in a diaper and we found more when we took shoes off after getting home!

There is a new roped-off toddler section that has a lot of the activities we've done before and some new ones, like this smaller version of the huge slides.

Both boys had no problems with the small slide, but then I took them on a big one.  Carter wanted me to go with him so that meant Rylan had to go to.  He was NOT a fan but Carter loved it and went at least a dozen more times on his own.

When I joined back up with Suzy and Jen, they were trying to decide if Niki Taylor was behind them.  After pulling her picture up on Suzy's phone, we decided it was her.  It's taken forever, but I've finally had my first celebrity siting in Nashville!  Though, Nicole Kidman has probably sat next to me at an event at Cheekwood and I never noticed (apparently, she and Keith Urban go there a lot with their kids).

After "discreetly" taking some pictures for our group, it was back to playing!

Another of the new activities is lassoing cows.  I showed Carter my lame version of how to lasso and he was a pro on his first attempt!

Rylan was more into using his strength and trying to pull the cow down :)

He did give lassoing a try though!

After a picnic lunch, we took the kids on the hayride (though there wasn't any hay, which is okay with me - hay is itchy!).   The kids loved looking for the wooden animals all along the trail.  Here is the back of Chase, Carter, Riley, and Evie (Jen's oldest).

Duck races!  Luckily there were no pinched fingers!

Then it was off to feed the animals before the farm closed for the day.

Rylan loved feeding the animals! (This is a happy screaming face.)

 
We bought three pumpkins on our way out.  I needed a flat one for my bat decoration and the boys each got one of these super cute round guys in the back.

We had lots of fun and were happy that some of our friends were able to join us.  I'm always bragging about how much fun this place is but no one else we know had ever been out there.  Now I have some other people to back me up and convince our friends to try it out!