You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head and nothing makes it go away? That’s how it was for my Friday night, except it was a phrase that kept repeating in my dreams. “Perfect prior planning prevents poor performance.” Over and over and OVER. If something went wrong in the dream, a voice would say “you could have prevented that poor performance.” It was beyond annoying and I couldn’t stop it, no matter how much I tried.


We didn’t get to pick strawberries or blueberries this summer so I’ve been determined we make it to the pumpkin patch. We had a lengthy to-do list for Saturday but I penciled in pumpkin patching for the afternoon. My friend told me about a farm where we could pick pumpkins off the stems, not just out of a giant bucket. It was over half an hour away but I thought the experience would be worth it. I had done the perfect prior planning so I didn’t expect any poor performance from the farm.


It felt wrong to pick pumpkins when it was 75* and we were wearing sandals! I actually started sweating. AB brought her Easter basket and insisted on trying to stuff too large pumpkins in it. 

The farm was free but we to buy tickets to the hayride. While we waited for the hayride to come back around Annabelle played in the corn kernels and took advantage of the free face painting. Face painting is the way to her heart.
Thanks to my prior planning I knew we had at least an hour to pick pumpkins and play in the hay maze before the farm closed. Twelve minutes after arriving a man walked around telling everyone they were closing in five minutes. FIVE MINUTES. All my research said they were open until 8. Christopher pointed out to a worker that the website and the sign said as much, but she said “that’s for the farm down the road, not us.” Because that makes sense. Put the information for another business on your sign. We didn’t get the hayride. We didn’t have time to go back and pick pumpkins but I grabbed a few from the store as we were being herded out. We had to wrap things up quickly and I was somewhat in a huff about it, but Annabelle had fun and we’ll visit another patch in coming weeks. 
We painted our pumpkins last night. I recommend painting pumpkins over carving them by 1000%. Guess which one of us spent precious time painting sprinkles on a doughnut pumpkin that will rot in two weeks. Hint- it wasn’t Christopher.