Drive-Thru Pumpkin Patch

 

Hi friends, thanks for stopping over. We hope you had a lovely weekend. For the first time in what feels like forever, we actually had something planned. I had heard about this local farm that was doing a drive-thru pumpkin patch experience and I wanted to check it out. I reserved us some tickets for Sunday morning and I am so happy we went.


Tanaka Farms in Irvine, CA is this massive farm full of growing produce and was decorated for the Fall season. Normally they have fruit and veggie picking all year-round, with group tours, but because of COVID we wanted to stay safe in our car. We loved the drive-thru option. Along the drive, we got to see the various areas of the farm, and learn fun facts about how Tanaka Farms came to be.


The cars were only allowed to drive as fast as you can walk, so we were going realllllly slow. We let Ella sit up front with us so she could see and enjoy everything that we did. We have masks on because along the drive, staff members passed out little samples to us.

Candy corn and roasted squash seeds- yum! 


About halfway through the drive, you can park your car and hop out to the patch to pick out your pumpkins. This was Ella's favorite part of the tour and she did NOT want to go back in the car, haha.

I liked how empty it was, even for a Sunday. They were definitely taking the social-distancing seriously, and of course, masks were required at all times.


Ella found her pumpkin! The perfect size for her. 


This is sadly the best family picture we got, as it felt like a million degrees, Ella would barely stay still and we were trying to be quick since we were outside of the car and on a time limit.



The only pic I got with my girl. I feel like this is 99% of our pics together- sun in my eyes, Ella not looking. Oh well, what can you do?


The rest of the drive was just full of pretty views of the farm and Fall decorations! 






I had to take a pic of the Marty McFly scarecrow, Back to the Future is my favorite movie EVER.


Even though it was a quick little trip, it was so nice just to get out of the house and do something different! We enjoyed it a lot, and I felt extremely safe the whole time- even when we were picking our pumpkins in the patch. I hope when all this Covid business is gone, we can go to the farm for one of their guided tours and fruit picking experiences.


Later in the day we gave the pumpkins a bath...

 


Ella LOVED this activity.

After the pumpkins were nice and clean, we carved/decorated them! Ella liked exploring the pumpkin guts and got the full sensory experience. 



Ella's reaction to the pumpkin insides? "Ew!"

Ella opted to paint her pumpkins...


Ella loves painting so this was really fun for her. Please excuse the disaster in the background. #apartmentlife


I attempted to carve a tooth in my pumpkin and failed. A for effort?


Overall, it was a really fun day and nice to do some Fall activities finally. I am still not feeling great with this pregnancy, but I am trying to push through for my family. I know I will be back to feeling normal again soon, and am just thankful and hopeful that our little babe is growing healthy and strong. 


Thanks for reading about our fun Fall weekend! 


Tomorrow is Ella's 2nd birthday and I can hardly believe it! Time really does fly by. I will have a little post to share tomorrow to celebrate the last two years, and then later this week we will share what we did for her on her birthday. So be sure to check back! ;)


4 comments

  1. That looks like so much fun. I love the way they have it set up. Simon got a pumpkin yesterday and he wants to carve it, even though we've never done that before!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I totally got a tooth out of your carving. We did a drive thru Halloween thing at night that was fun and not scary. I wish we had someone to do a pumpkin patch like that, with social distancing and limited people.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love your pumpkin patch experience, they did an excellent job with it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is so neat; I have never heard of a drive-thru pumpkin patch before. These business are doing a stellar job thinking outside the box this year. We just watched all three Back to the Future movies with our boys this month and it was so fun; I hadn't seen them in ages.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate and love all questions and comments!