Here goes....First, let me start out by saying that Saturdays have become precious in our household now that hockey season has begun.... we don't take them lightly, and we don't want to waste our time with Chris before he goes to work....Now for the rant...
This weekend we thought that Gentry's Farm might be a fun way to spend Saturday morning. Grace and I fight over what she'll wear, we get the wagon in the car and we are off. Driving up to the farm we see tons of people, which we expected, seeing that it is one of the last Saturdays before Halloween, no biggie. We park and load grace in the wagon and head to the entrance...
SIX DOLLARS PER PERSON... INCLUDING THE CHILD! Ummm... excuse me? That's EIGHTEEN dollars for our family. I suck it up and pay, thinking it will be worth it. Grace is all excited about seeing 'amimals' so we head in that direction first.... Ok, 3 goats, several pigeons and a turkey later, we are done with the animals.... WHAT? We saw more exciting animals on the way to the farm than we saw there!
(calm down, Jamie, there's more to do and see, I am sure...)
Next comes the corn barn... troughs and troughs of dried corn that the kids can play in.... sounds awesome...right?
Think again.... Grace was loving it for a few minutes and then out of the blue she is bombarded by BIG (think 7-9 year old boys) kids pushing her around and stealing toys right out of her hand.... Once this happened, and I handled it properly... " I'm sorry, she was playing with that, it's really RUDE to take things from little kids..." (The kid reluctantly gave the toy back)
Second time.... YES, a different kid, I grabbed the toy out of the boy's hand that he had just YANKED from Grace and gave him the 'box out' move so he couldn't go in for the second try.
Third time.... I almost lost it. This happened several more times before Grace was just done trying....and I was done with these little BRATS. Come on people, this is clearly an activity for toddlers and preschoolers... why are you allowing your HUGE, OBNOXIOUS BRATS for children bully the other kids to get toys....(which they shouldn't be playing with in the first place.) CALLING ALL PARENTS.... WHERE ARE YOU?
Clearly, this was a parental issue and didn't have anything to do with Gentry's Farm directly... but there started the downhill spiral...
There were a few more activities... but nothing terribly interesting, Grace was clearly frustrated and didn't really want to try anything else...BUT there wasn't really anything else to capture her attention.... and I paid how much? Oh, that's right.... EIGHTEEN DOLLARS!
At this point, we'd been there around 30 minutes or so and we were all ready to go. The cheapness in me wouldn't give in and we tried walking around some more. NOPE... grace started having a meltdown and there was nothing we could do... We left after about an hour... with a child who could not be consoled.
Let me compare this with the trip we had last year to Walden Farm in Smyrna. First of all, it's FREE... there are REAL animals, baby animals, mama animals, TONS of activities, and the kids (who were one year YOUNGER) loved it. It was so worth the drive... and I would recommend it 1000 times more than Gentry. I don't think I'll ever go back there.
Let me give a little disclaimer... I do appreciate that Gentry's farm seemed to have more of a 'christian' theme, and nothing scary and traditionally "haloween," but that's about all. Also, let me say, Walden didn't have anything scary either...
Ok, I am also going to post pictures of my favorite new addition to our household... A DOOR! Yes, a door... well, actually, the storage that is opened up behind it. Sunday my dad graciously agreed to help us cut a hole in the wall in the play room and build a door, instantly opening up more storage! This is so exciting to me, because I am about to have an anxiety attack for our lack of even a coat closet! I love hiding our JUNK!
One happy moment before the breakdown
Playing in the corn bin between mean kid episodes...
Riding the tractor
The door, unframed, but beautiful non the less
A peek at the storage I will have!
2 comments:
I love ranting Jamie! Its one of the main reasons you are suck a kindred spirit. And I am so glad you posted this because we were just talking about which farm to go to this year. We really liked Walden too so it looks like thats where we're going. It makes me sad to think of poor Gracie having toys taken away from her by those big mean bullies...I mean just look at her in her little sweater, how could anyone be mean to such a cutie!?
suck should have been such. Just in case you were wondering.
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