Roloff Farms!!!

This weekend, we decided to take a trip to Portland, Oregon, to visit our crazy friends, Dave and Gwen, pictured above.

They also have two precious girls, close in age to ours, so the kiddos had a wonderful time playing together.

Lilyann and Kayla are only a month apart, and enjoyed the weekend together.

On Sunday, we got the girls ready, and drove to Roloff farms, yes, THE Roloff farms, of the "Little People, Big World" t.v. show! We are fans of their show, and I think since working with children with special health care needs for so long, when this show came on, I was immediately attracted to it. In fact, about 11 years ago when I first started working in pediatric occupational therapy, one of my first patients was an adorable little 2 yr old girl with dwarfism. The Roloff's live only about 10 minutes away from our friends. It was crazy driving in, as you can imagine. They only open their farm to the public during pumpkin season.

I had no idea if we would see any of the family members there, but after we parked, Jeremy was one of the first people I saw. He was coming down from the house, and he jumped on this tractor, and started taking large groups of people on tours around the farm!

Here's a photo that gives you a better idea of how many people there actually were there. It was a beautiful, warm, October day yesterday.

One of the first things we did was to get in line for a tour. The tour began by taking us up around the front of the house. Here is their newly remodeled part of their house. Gorgeous!

Here's the front door area, that you see a lot on the show. One of the things the tour guide told us is that they are actually filming 5 days a week, 11 months out of the year! That was a bit shocking to me, I never thought they actually had to film them this much!

We wound around back behind the house, where they stopped to let us out at the western town that Matt built. Molly was there waiting, and people were free to go up and get pictures taken with her. She was very sweet.

This is a little church built next to the old western town.

Here's part of it, the old post office. This was a very well built little town, and very fun for kids to run around and explore. The girls loved it!

Here's a better view of it. I am amazed at the level of creativity Matt has, and how his visions became such an amazing reality around his acreage.

We then got back on and rode past the pirate ship, and Molly's castle, before we arrived back at the pumpkin patch. As soon as we got off, I was surprised to see...

.... Amy! She was standing down in the pumpkin patch and there was a long line of people waiting to take a picture with her.

She was sooo nice! I just love her. She really liked Lilyann and started talking to her, she wanted to know where we were from, etc. I even gave her a flyer from my workplace. It is something I think Matt would be very interested in because it is very much like their farm, built to be engaging and interesting for children. For example, our elevator looks like a mine shaft on the outside, and inside as well. As the elevator goes up and down, through the glass there are "jewels" for the kids to look at. Our front desk looks like a covered wagon, and our therapy pool looks like a pond in the middle of a farm yard. I invited them to come and visit!

They had a lot to look at around the pumpkin patch. This was the pumpkin funhouse, with lots of little rooms filled with a hilarious pumpkin family.

Night, night baby pumpkin!!

Big daddy pumpkin is taking a bath.

There were a lot of unique and interesting pumpkins to look at.

Miranda made a pumpkin train. We had spent a long time here, and it was about time to go, so we started walking to our car, when....

Matt Roloff himself came driving down from the house in one of his farm vehicles. He got mobbed. There was a camera crew following him around, as you can see here, and lots of people ran up to him and wanted their picture taken with him. He was very gracious. He would take a picture, and then was only able to pull forward about another foot before more people wanted a picture. He did this several times. At one point there was a man with his son around 10 yrs. old. As Matt was talking with some people, the son had enough nerve to jump in the seat next to Matt while the dad took pictures. Matt never even noticed, because he was busy trying to deal with the people to his left.

Then, we noticed their youngest son, Jacob. The only family member we didn't see was Zach.

Then, it was time to go....what a fabulous experience! This is one pumpkin patch outing I will never forget!!