Cox Farms Adventure

Ray and Trevor are off to a wedding in FL this weekend, leaving just me and a couple of cutie little girlies. Rachael has this undying bond with her brother and has been missing him terribly. Consequently, I am trying to keep our time busy and fun. Friday after school I took them to Chik Fil A for dinner and they played in the play area for over an hour. Then we spent most of today at Cox Farms in Centerville. Now, Cox Farms is kind of a tradition with us. We have been going every year we have been back. I'm actually not sure how much of the farm is an actual FARM, as we only ever visit the fall festival they have. And what a weird and trippy festival it is! There are TONS of slides, all done in different themes and of varying sizes. Ariel is really too small for the biggest ones, so we stick to the medium sized ones. They are all fast, lined with hay bales and require a trek up a hill to get to them. Some have dinosaur themes with big plaster dinos soaring around it, one is a dragon in a volcano- complete with sound effects. One is a giant and the entrance way is covered with plastic bugs and you hear a giant's voice saying "Fee Fie Fo fum, Cox Farms is a lot of fun!" (We missed the giant slide this year! I am so bummed!) It's all so corny.

They also have the infamous hayride. This is the weirdest hayride you will ever go on. It's complete with an Alien landing, many plaster animals lurking in the woods and corn fields. There is even wooden cut outs of such icons as spongebob, charlie brown and pikachu. It really is weird. Then, the wagon gets stuck in some mud. And we are asked to yell for help. We do... and this farmer comes out wearing this huge fake bobble looking head and pulls us out of the mud. See.. it's weird. I'll probably say that a lot this post. But the best part is the end of the ride. When we go into this huge dark barn. The wagon stops and, suddenly, the lights start flashing ala night club style, this peppy maniacal music starts playing and you look around and the barn is garish, covered in gnomes, trees with eyes, skeletons and other really crazy stuff. Think Jack Black when he is on shrooms in that movie about Tenacious D (what was that movie called?) It's like that. The girls were finally not scared of the barn this year! Go them.

This year they intro'd their cornundrum maze, and we had lots of fun exploring that- full of optical illusions and a vortex that made us dizzy and I had to practically shove the girls through because halfway through they decided they didn't like it and we couldn't turn around. I wish the fall festival wasn't so darn expensive to get in (15/person) because I would go every day! It's gotten more popular every year, though, and now we are lucky if we don't have to wait in line to go down the slides, etc. We used to be able to go on weekdays and it was not packed. Now it's packed whatever day we go- school groups during the week, everyone else on the weekend.

I posted most of these pics to facebook. They are iphone pics because Ray took the pocket cam to FL. I'll throw in a couple kitty pictures, too, because they're cute.


Sitting in front of the 1007lb pumpkin.


Ariel being, I dunno, a grown up? heh.


Rachael being a kernel on a multicoloured ear of corn.


There was, no joke, two guys dressed up as corn playing chess in the maze, behind a fence, no less. What's your job? I dress up as corn and play chess all day in a corn maze.


There was a gorilla carrying around a guy in a cage. He said the gorilla was his friend.


Some of the better done wooden cut outs. Charlie Brown et al. Some of them are really bad, but still recognizable. Some I don't know who they are. There are tons of them everywhere.


At one point we go through this witches hut and there are witches making brew everywhere (fake people, not real people). These are skeleton witches around a misty cauldron. We also go through a grave yard with funny gravestones.


The highlight of the hayride for the kids. They spend all year talking about Cox Farms. We really talk about it at least once a month. And the alien on the hayride always comes up. Ariel saw him and exclaimed excitedly "Look mommy! It's the alien dressed up as a man!"


We all get to pick out little pumpkins at the end of the trip. So the girls picked out their pumpkins and posed next to the kind of creepy sunflower. We had a blast today!


Stripey sleeping because he is darn cute. I usually sit at the top of the stairs while the kids fall asleep (or Ray does). Greystripe curled up on my lap and zonked out. This is what he usually does when I sit down. He's the lap happiest cat I have ever had. I love it.


He and Chaos really do like each other. Chaos wants to play soooo badly with Greystripe, but he's too nervous. Chaos is so huge and everytime they try to play, Stripey gets scared and runs away. They played for a while last night. Chaos even rolled over on his back and Stripey pounced on him, then arched his teeny back and bounded away. It was ridiculously cute.