The Big Gray Barn

For a while now, I have seen different photographers in the area tagging their senior and family pictures at a place called "The Big Gray Barn, Co".  It looked like a really cute place and I was interested in visiting it but I just hadn't found a good time to go up to this point.  Since we didn't have anything on the calendar on Tuesday of fall break, and the weather looked like a pretty nice day, I asked the kiddos if they wanted to go up and check it out with me.  

'Turns out, the Big Gray Barn is about 20 minutes from our house and just as cute as I had hoped that it would be.  There is a little bit of everything, from sunflowers to pumpkins and gourds, to "you pick" flowers.  And there are several photo opportunities as well so I will have to remember this place for our family photos in years to come.

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Since it was a Tuesday afternoon, there weren't any other people there so everything was self-serve and you could pay using cash or venmo.  I had originally thought that I would pick some of the u-pick flowers but neither Morgan nor I could figure out the actual cost as it was written differently in a couple of places and we didn't want to mess up with the payment and actually pay too little, so we decided to just walk through the fields and enjoy our time together.  Maybe we can cut some bouquets next year when the spring flowers are in full bloom.  

They had this little gift area if we wanted to buy glass vases or baskets, etc.

And then they had an area where you could pick gourds and pumpkins that had already been picked.

'Since we already bought pumpkins for the season, we decided to bypass that area and we just started down the walking trails towards the flowers.

It wasn't until after I took this picture of the girls that I noticed something...

... Here.  Let me zoom out a bit... LOL

Let's try again...

There were also a couple of barn cats that found us.  'Turns out that they were not shy at all.  Once the kids acknowledged them, they followed us around until we left.

I wish that Noel and Marissa could have been with us, but I am thankful for those of us who were able to go adventure together.  We will definitely come back!

Pumpkin Carving 2024

Since three of the four kids were home for fall break, we decided to do our annual pumpkin carving on Sunday night.  The kids and I went to the store and picked up our pumpkins and then after Melayna came home from work later Sunday night, we all got together and started working on them.  

We had such a fun time - I only wish that Marissa could have been with us.  We realized that last year Morgan was gone at school and this year it's Marissa.  It just doesn't feel quite right when all four of them cannot be here, even though I know it will be like this more and more.

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Nolan got right to work cutting out the top of his pumpkin and then he asked me to scoop all the seeds out for him.

As soon as I finished Nolan's pumpkin, Morgan asked me to do the same for her.  Apparently, no one really likes to scoop out the guts.  LOL

Nolan went with the traditional smiley face, although I admit, it still ended up looking a bit creepy.

I used a pattern and managed to get a cat's face.

I don't know why I didn't get pictures of the other three pumpkins after they were completed, but Noel cut the middle pumpkins shown below .... his was a jack o latern in front of flames.  Melayna had the dinosaur to the right and then Morgan cut out a ghost of sorts.

I always love doing this from year to year and seeing everyone's creativity come alive.