A-Maze-ing

 
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PATCHY: We're busy, busy, busy here at MPA with this, that, and the other thing. But we wanted to make sure we carved out a little time to visit a pumpkin patch and corn maze this year, and that's just what we did today.

Since we've moved a bit south of Seattle, I looked around our immediate vicinity for options. It's not too terribly far until it becomes farm country in these parts!

A clear choice quickly became Carpinito Brothers, in south Kent, WA. They had a Sasquatch corn maze this year, we'd never been there before, and it was about 15 minutes from home. Sold!

We arrived a little before 2 p.m. It wasn't sunny, but it wasn't raining, so we were happy enough with the latter to make up for the former. 

Check out this cool grid, below. Carpintino works with MazePlay (http://www.mazeplay.com/), a corn maze company out of Idaho. 

Per Carpintino's website, "In previous years, we would plant a full field of corn, and when the corn was about a foot tall, MazePlay would drive a small tractor with a roto-tiller and cut away the paths in the shape of the maze. But now they have a new process which is remarkable and extremely effective. This year, they planted the corn exactly to the design of the maze. Think about that. How it works is a tractor with a seed planter will do passes, back and forth on a bare field. The seed planter communicates with a digital file of our maze map, and drops seeds where there needs to be corn, and doesn’t drop seeds where there are paths. Imagine all the stopping and starting the seed planter must do during each pass with all those paths."

Pretty cool, isn't it? 

I have to say, this corn maze was the tallest and thickets and healthiest we've seen in our 10-ish years of greater Seattle area corn maze traipsing. 

There were 12 checkpoints to find within the maze. We found them all with no trouble, thanks to a very accurate map handed out before entrance. 

We were grateful that our maze trip was almost entirely mud free, and it was entirely rain free. 

We do kind of wish we'd gone an hour later, when blue skies dominated. Oh well, if that's the biggest complaint, we're lucky!

Before leaving, we picked up a couple of pumpkins (of course!), as well as some other on-site gorwn produce, including kale, green onions, celery and cabbage. 

Hands down, it was the nicest produce of its type I've seen ever. We need to get down to Carpintino's for produce on a regular basis!

Lucky #13

UNICORN-Y: We interrupt our European travelogue recap to bring you more recent news. Specifically, Annabelle turned 13.

We have been talking for months (years?) about her getting some color in her hair, and we decided her thirteenth birthday was a good time to make that happen.

Last Friday we went to Steven at Salon Spectrum in Burien on the recommendation of a waitress we know who has fabulous rainbow hair. Poor Steven didn't know what he was getting into when he booked Annabelle's appointment over the phone. The estimate was it would take two hours. It took twice that, because of her super loooooong and thick hair.

The first step was bleaching the ends.

Next up, time to add some cobalt blue. In the end, she had an ocean of curls and was super happy!

Monday afternoon, Annabelle had a few friends gather in Ballard for a small party at Full Tilt, an ice cream parlor and arcade. They have a nice birthday party package where you can bring your own food in (we brought in some Costco pizza, and unicorn candy pops we made), plus kids get a soda and a custom ice cream designed by the birthday person.

Annabelle requested a Unicorn Ice Dream flavored dessert. She chose vanilla bean ice cream, with M&Ms, rainbow sprinkles and mini marshmallows. It was a party in a tub!

The Full Tilt scooper even served the ice cream up unicorn style - in a cup, with a sugar cone horn.

We also had some super special Unicorn Froot Loops - which we sought out and carried back from Europe! (For whatever silly reason, they're not available in the States.)

All in all, it was a really nice afternoon with some nice families, fun games and great treats. 

BOUNCING BOY: In other news, we have a trampoline. A biggish one. We've always had a little jogger/exercise sized one, and it has forever been CJ's favorite exercise outlet. However, a couple of days ago, an ad popped up on one of the email Moms and Dads lists I'm on, a full size trampoline for just $50. We were on it immediately, and were lucky to be chosen to buy it from the list of the 'yes, please!' people. (The key: Always in your response tell them how and when you can pick it up.)

So, the kids are happy jumpers now - fun!