Family Day

Today was a beautiful day -- warm and sunny! We headed out to The Chatterbox for lunch and ran into one of my classmates from high school and a friend of Claire's from dance class. The restaurant was packed!!! After waiting in the long line to get a table, we were seated next to the platform in the middle of the restaurant where an orange Thunderbird was parked. It was very Halloween-y. After perusing the menu, we were both shocked when Claire ordered a hamburger for lunch (gasp!)! I wasn't sure if she'd eat it, and tried in vain to talk her into a hot dog, but she ended up eating about 1/4-1/3 of the hamburger. We made a big deal out of it to, hopefully, encourage her to order outside of her comfort zone in the future. Like mother, like daughter. : )

@ The Chatterbox

After lunch, we headed right across the street to Ideal Farms. It's a cute little farm with some steer (I think!?! I'm not an expert on livestock.), a few little animals, a small play structure, a haunted barn and lots of little boards with cutouts where visitors can stick their heads in and pretend to be princesses, Sponge Bob and other characters (I actually purchased some really nice mums there a few weeks prior.). After visiting Tranquillity Farms a few weeks ago, Claire was disappointed that this farm didn't have any rides. We went through the haunted barn (Claire's first experience in a "haunted house") and she loved it! Luckily, there were no live people inside to scare us.

Steer (I think)

Scary Dorothy mannequin

Our goal for today was to buy replacement pumpkins for the two that had rotted, but we didn't feel like taking another hayride and having to search another pumpkin patch. We looked in the bins of pumpkins close to the farm store, but we didn't see any that caught our eye. So, I'll make a trip to the "pumpkin patch" at BJ's or Walmart this week so we have a pumpkin or two to carve!

We finished up our day by driving by Laney, Frank and Janelle's house to check out their Halloween decorations. They were great!