Living Locally: The MAiZE on Sauvie Island

Today we had another gorgeous day around here in Oregon. The weather has been simply amazing with temperatures in the 80’s…it seriously doesn’t even feel like October, although I hear that will be changing soon and our normal rainy weather will be returning soon.

Last Sunday Wayne was busy working (harvesting more grapes) so I took the kids to several different places for our mini ‘stay-cation’ – one of them being The MAiZE up on Sauvie Island. None of us had ever been up on Sauvie Island before, so it was quite the adventure. It was a little bit of a drive for us, but we all stopped for coffee and then split up into teams and played “slug bug” counting with all of the VW Bugs that we saw. (Do you remember playing that when you were a kid?) Anyways, the corn Maize was amazing – it was split up into two sections which were great with little ones. We actually only made it past the first half because it was so incredibly hot that day – we had to have a break and get some drinks.

The MAiZE was a lot of fun because you could pick from a list of themed cue cards, where you would get to a number inside of the maze that correlated with a question on the card so you’d know which way to turn. The cards we chose had questions that were easy enough for all of the kids to answer, but there were more challenging themed cards you could pick from as well.

After our MAiZE adventure we ventured out into the rest of the pumpkin patch, where there was an animal farm, a little market, a variety of food vendors, and some other kids activities like a hay bale pyramid and tractor rides.

We ate some lunch and then went on a free hay ride over to pick out some pumpkins. The kids know that whatever they pick they have to hall out themselves – so Noah picked an adorable 2.5 pound pumpkin, Emma got a cute 7.5 pound pumpkin, and Anika dragged a 21 pound pumpkin with her. She had to set it down every couple of minutes, but she made it!

I ended up purchasing this cool warted looking pumpkin from their market as well as a Cinderella pumpkin that is blue (I’d never seen one before!) as well as some apple cider and other goodies.

We spent the entire afternoon hanging out in the beautiful sunshine.  I absolutely love pumpkin patches and the fall…I think it’s the beautiful days, the soccer, celebrations, Halloween, and of course the impending holidays. It very well may be my favorite time of year.