Pumpking Patch, Patapsco, and Philadelphia (Month of P's)

We took a trip out to the country to a farm that was hosting a pumpkin patch. As usual, it was difficult to get a good picture of everyone at the same time. Oh well, the setting was pretty, and we had fun. Here we are at the patch choosing our pumpkins.

The tractor that pulled the hay ride to and from the pumpkin patch was fun.

One of the highlights out there was a group of horse riders and their hounds that they were running to chase foxes. There were dogs running everywhere around there. One of the dogs even got into the store area and kept standing on his hind legs to get up to the table where all the baked goods were stacked for sale. Derek was especially enthralled with all the dogs running around. Fortunately, the dogs were all friendly, though they were very forward about sniffing everyone and everywhere.

The horses were much better behaved.

We also took a trip into their corn maze. It was difficult to make it through, especially since the girls were initially taking turns choosing which direction we would go at every opportunity to turn. We obviously went around in circles multiple times. Finally, I sent us down a new path to get to the far section of the maze, and then Tanja managed to keep us away from sections we had already traversed and got us to the exit. I will admit to a sigh of relief when we saw the exit sign. Here are Derek and Karina in the maze. We were 'lost' in the maze for over an hour.

Back at home, one of Derek's favorite activities is putting on other people's big shoes and trying to walk around. Here he is wearing my sneakers, very pleased with himself for being a "big kid".

Karina had a crazy hair day at school, and Tanja definitely fit the bill with how she styled Karina's hair that day.

We took advantage of some beautiful fall weather to go and hike to a waterfall in Patapsco State Park near our house. It was a pretty setting; in fact, while we were there at the waterfall eating our snack, a guy proposed to his girlfriend right there at the waterfall. After she said yes and after they had as much privacy as they could get with our family and other hikers wandering around, I offered a congratulations and took some pictures of them with their phone at their request.

Here are Derek and I at the waterfall.

Crazy guy likes to see the world upside down sometimes.

Lydia has mastered the art of the cheesy smile.

Big hug from the girls:

I really liked the waterfall, and I wanted to get a picture of me sitting at the top of it. I invited Karina to go too since she likes climbing on the rocks. Since I needed Tanja to take the picture, I didn't want to leave Derek down at the base because he was bound to wander into the pool of water, splash around (or worse), so I picked him up and brought him too. It had rained the previous day which made the rocks extra slippery in places. Unfortunately, as I was on top of the boulder where the waterfall comes down, I slipped on one of the wet rocks. Because I had Derek in my arms and I am not a horrible father, I didn't drop him off the rock so I could use my hands to brace my fall, so as I fell, my body weight went straight onto my knee which went straight into the face of the rock. It hurt...a lot. I was initially afraid I broke something, but I grinned/grimaced for the picture. It would have been extra cool had it been a Pulitzer Prize caliber picture, but sadly it was not.

I limped up to a safe spot on the trail, rolled my pant leg up and saw a large bump swelling up underneath my knee (kind of looking like I had a second knee on that leg). We were about a 45 minute walk/hike back to the car, so I limped back as best I could (coming to the realization that if I could put my full body weight on my leg, it probably wasn't broken). We eventually made it home where I iced, elevated, and rested my knee. It was really painful to walk and go up or down stairs for a couple days. Two weeks later and there is still a swollen lump, and while it is still very painful to kneel on that knee, I am able to walk around just fine. I went to the doctor finally this last weekend, and they ran me through the full range of motion and some other structural tests on my knee. Their diagnosis was a deep bruise that is just going to need some time to fully heal.

One of my main concerns about my knee is we were planning on taking advantage of a day off from school for the girls to go to Philadelphia. Tanja found out that our membership we bought for the Maryland Science Center also got us into the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia for free, and she had heard good things about that museum from others that had been there. It was a place we were interested in seeing the last time we were in Philadelphia, but we decided there were other things we wanted to do instead and hadn't heard from others how cool it was. Now that we knew we could get in for free, the calculus changed.

We found a hotel nearby that allowed for an early check in during the week so we could drop Snoopy off in the hotel room and then go on to Philadelphia and spend the day at the Franklin Institute, a science museum targeted at children. One of the highlights was an exhibit on the brain. Here the kids (and adults who were flexible enough to maneuver) were able to climb around a series of large-scale synapses in the brain. This was a big hit for our kids that love climbing around - especially after being cooped up in the car for a couple hours. Here are Derek, Tanja, and Karina having fun.

This is a good picture to demonstrate a sense of scale to how big the climbing structure really is.

In another exhibit, there was a giant heart that you could climb through to see the path blood takes to get through the human heart. Lydia was especially excited to go to this exhibit.

Derek liked climbing up and down the stairs inside the heart.

See how giant the Giant Heart is?

Other exhibits included displays about machines, including this digger that kids could operate to demonstrate levers and gears.

There was the standard Newtonian physics room with pulleys that made it easier to lift yourself up.

There was a large display on trains - here are the girls in the engine room of a steam locomotive that you could climb aboard.

Tanja and the girls tried out some virtual reality glasses in the space exhibit. According to them, they were training to be astronauts by diving into water to simulate weightlessness. From where I was looking, they seemed to just be looking around wearing silly goggles.

In the aviation exhibit, the kids all sat in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

The girls both took turns inside a wind tunnel while holding foam wings out.

There was also a lava tube that kids could crawl through.

We brought the tripod outside to try for a family portrait to put in the family history and descendancy book Tanja's aunt is making. It's always a struggle to get a good picture of everyone at the same time, so these were the two best we could do.