Its FALL!!!!! :))))

So it's Fall around Deerfield, Ohio...cooler days, colder nights, leaves starting to change here and there. Apple cider on the shelves and hot-dog roasts taking place, and the four youngest and I all went on our first hay ride the other day! I've been on several, so I'm not a newbie to this particular type of celebration, but I think it fair to say this was not your typical 'round the yard and back again hayride. It was at our annual Autumn gathering for our 4H group, the first one the kids and I have been to. Everyone else has participated for years, and by now see flying down the highway on an open flatbed trailer packed with pumpkin-loving-folk as not just normal, but downright entertaining. To each his own, I don't judge....just know I will never ever ever be able to go on another hay ride again. Ever.

This is the beginning, everyone loading up...no one thinking to warn me (on the right with the kid in my lap) of what was coming. You know, in case I would have (most definitely) opted not to participate in the ride of terror? Up front, fearless, apparently, sits my second oldest Love. She was insanely embarrassed by my following behaviours. ( Sorry Sissy, honest engine.)

This is the first bump. To my credit, I didn't cry when we pulled out onto the road. I didn't scream when we went down the hill. I did beg to get off but the driver couldn't hear me and so I really did hang in there pretty tough, I thought. Then we hit this huge bump and I had instant visions of my little ones flopping off the side and getting road burn or broken bones or for heavens sake guts squished underneath of hay-bearing tires!!!!

And this is the rest of the ride. You can't see much of Nic and Payten because I have my other arm over them, pinning them down. They all three swore they couldn't breath, that I was squishing the guts out of them. Hello!!! Obviously I'm preventing gut squishing here!!! Jaeden is lucky she was out of reach, because I would have clothes-lined her to the bottom of the trailer too if I could have. All four of them were appalled, and no one wants to go on a hayride with me ever ever again. Ever.  

 

 

Just to give proper credit to the non-insane folks who planned and participated in this lovely rite-of-Autumn-passage: We weren't really speeding. We weren't really on a highway. It was a quiet back-country road out by West Branch and I would comfortably say we traveled at about 10-15mph? They do it every year, and everyone seemed to quite enjoy the ride. Personaly, I'm thinking a slow stroll through a covered bridge might be more my style these day...

 

Happy Autumn Friends! <3