It’s fall season again!! Pumpkins, fall scented candles, cool breezes and holidays jumping at us every month! It’s my favorite season of the entire year. So we all come across fall checklists and one of the ones always there is a fall festival. We live in a small town so we are lucky enough that we have a Pumpkin Festival hosted by the Elgin Christmas Tree Farm not that far from where we live. We went this weekend and took our son who is a year and a half old. We went for the first time last year with him, so we are trying to make some new family traditions! I never thought family traditions would be fun, but I really enjoyed myself. This is how our day went.
When we got there, our son was still napping. We know better than to wake a sleeping toddler (all hell breaks loose) so we decided to stop by a drive through Mexican snack place close by and get two agua frescas (freshly squeezed fruit juice, it’s really good). I ordered a cantaloupe and my husband ordered a pineapple drink. We drank it in the Pumpkin Fest parking lot and slowly woke up the sleeping toddler. Once he woke (he was still half asleep) the first thing we decided to do was go for a tractor ride! The tractor ride takes you all along the Elgin Christmas Tree Farm property and you can see the Christmas trees that are growing there! Some are already big and tall and some are teeny tiny little baby trees. It’s pretty awesome. The tractor ride also takes you to stops such a corn field maze and two additional picnic and park area for the kids. Pumpkins are all over the property and it really puts you in the fall fest spirit! We decided he was still a little small for the corn field maze, so we are saving that for next year.
After the tractor ride, the next thing we did was look for a little snack to eat. Under a pavilion, a couple of local vendors were selling baked goods, wraps, chips and drinks. We got two sausage wraps and a pumpkin cake which was incredible! Talk about getting in the fall spirit, that pumpkin cake definitely did it for us. It was delicious. It was warm, moist, and the pumpkin aroma was so amazing! As soon as you unwrapped the pumpkin cake, the smell filled the air. I definitely need to look up a pumpkin cake recipe for this fall season.
After that, our son really woke up and was just like a mini wound up energizer bunny. We decided to let him burn off some steam and took him to a children’s play area where he truly enjoyed himself. Within the children’s play area there is also an additional maze which was fun to watch. There were adult sized swings which were fun for us too. I sat down while my husband took our son and they started playing in the dirt, on the slides, swings, playscape and generally having a good time. There as also an enormous hay stack which of course my husband had to climb with our son and pretend like they were king and mini king of the hay mountain. This stack was no joke, it was a good 20 feet in the air at least. The picture below really doesn’t serve it justice as far as the height.
After they had their fun and got off the hay mountain, they dusted themselves off and it was time for pictures before we left home. There was an older model white truck with the bed filled with pumpkins which was great for a photo opp, so we definitely had to take a picture. There are many photo opportunities all along the festival! We chose this one and not any more because our little one started becoming a little tired and cranky from burning off all that energy. I will say that taking pictures with a one year old is almost impossible. There were many pictures where he didn’t want to look up, pulling mommy’s hair, wiggling all around or wanting to run off. But hey, that’s part of the fun with a one year old, right? 😁
There is really so much to do there! Kids of all ages were having fun with face painting, corn field mazes, hay bail mazes, hay ride tractor pulls, bean bag toss games, pumpkin painting, water games, and it is just a really good family event to go to. We definitely had fun and will be back again next year.
