Last weekend we made a little road trip down to Orange, CA to visit the Irvine Railroad Park. I had googled pumpkin patches and the Irvine Railroad Park came up and had really great reviews. Even though it was a good 3 weeks before Halloween, it was pretty crowded but it did not disappoint. Tyler was immediately drawn to the stacks and stacks of pumpkins and wasted no time in sitting among them, picking them up, stacking and re-stacking them, then tossing them to the ground when he was finished.
They also had pony rides (the lines were way too long but Tyler was happy enough just petting them through the fence), a hay maze, and the piece de resistance, the 20 minute train ride through the entire park. Unfortunately we only had our flip with us so we didn’t take any pictures…
The train ride invigorated Tyler’s love of trains and he broke out his long forgotten Thomas the Train tracks and trains and started playing with those again, shouting “All Aboard!!” over and over and talking about the “Pumpkin Patch” before drifting off to sleep for the past week.
Tyler’s also very excited about Halloween this year, unlike last year when he had no idea what was going on and wondered why Mom was stuffing him in a Monkey Suit. His daycare is having a “Wizard of Oz”-themed party and asked each child to dress up as a character. Tyler is, of course, going to be the Scarecrow – the most intelligent of all the travelers all along, and later recognized as “the wisest man in all of Oz” 
I wasn’t sure how he was going to accept this but they watched the cartoon at daycare a few times and now he’s very excited telling everyone that he’s going to dress up as a scarecrow. I had high hopes of making his costume myself but after 2 trips to the craft store and hours online trying to find a decent hat, ended up buying him a costume that I will customize myself. I don’t want to scar him from Halloween due to a bad costume like my mom did to me…
According to Tyler, I”m going to dress up as a Ghost and Tom is going to dress up as a Tiger. (on a related note, he also tells everyone his baby brother’s name is Tiger).
