Pumpkin Day in Half Moon Bay

This month has been so dominated by the kids' medical issues that we are just starting to get to do the things we love about October... like getting ready for Halloween and watching our favorite team in the World Series! Go Giants!! #OrangeOctober #YesYesYes 

Last weekend, we took the boys to pick out pumpkins in the pumpkin capital of the world... Half Moon Bay!

Pumpkins by the sea

Our destination was Bob's Vegetable Stand and Pumpkin Farm, on the south side of HMB. As we were driving down Highway 1, James turns to me and asks, "Hey, when's the big pumpkin festival in Half Moon Bay?" And I'm like... "Um, I didn't check... It's proooobably this weekend." We had never been to the HMB pumpkin festival, but we had heard lots of stories about how horrible the traffic into and out of HMB is during festival weekend. We would not have chosen to go there during the pumpkin festival on purpose... but since we were already passing through Pacifica... and since we had already promised Calvin a day at the pumpkin farm... we couldn't just bail out. And since we were headed to Half Moon Bay anyway, we figured of course we should check out the festival itself before going on to Bob's farm. 

The festival was nice. It reminded me of the Fall Festival in my old hometown Duluth, GA. Lots of arts and crafts booths, tons of pumpkin foods - pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin coffee... and a little kid-friendly area with pumpkin carving, face painting, craft tables, and a stage where they were doing a sing-along of Halloween songs. Calvin and Henry got their faces painted and Calvin devoured a pumpkin smoothie. 

It's funny... For a while Calvin was afraid of spiders. Then he was obsessed with noticing them in Halloween decorations everywhere... and now I think he likes them! He picked out the spider face paint all by himself.

Next we went on to the pumpkin farm.

Last year, we went to Lemos Farm, which offers a pretty glamorous pumpkin party with lots of bells and whistles. It was fun and I remember that Calvin really liked the live music. I actually took the boys to Lemos Farm a few weeks ago with our friend Jaime and her daughter, Autumn.

This year, we decided to go for a totally different pumpkin picking experience. Bob's is a "pick 'em where they grow" farm with fields of pumpkins, a small area with goats and chickens and a turkey, a giant haystack for climbing and jumping, and of course, the vegetable stand. Much more low key. And it was great :)

We definitely sat in about two hours of traffic to get home :/ But that's part of the experience... right? We brought home four fat pumpkins. Two to carve, and two to paint. It's finally feeling like October around here. And Halloween is one week away!

Since I'm so excited about getting into the spooky Halloween spirit, I'm going to do a Halloween Countdown post series with toddler-friendly Halloween-themed play ideas. First in the series is coming up later today! #HalloweenCountdown #OneWeekTilHalloween