Who wants to blow the whistle?

Wales West Railway in Silverhill, Alabama- out in the pumpkin patch

You board the train which is a real coal burning steam engine, like Thomas the Train.

This engine called Dame Ann is from Wales and was used as a working engine, it is one of only 20 in the United States still running regularly

Then you pick a train car, covered in cobwebs, and little witches, they covered us with blankets, since the weather was in the mid 50's. We rode the train along past a graveyard, robots, a Welsh looking Bavarian building and then past a small pond.

You arrive 7 minutes later at a small haunted house in a barn and a pumpkin patch with tiny pumpkins for the kids to choose from. Emma was in search of the tiniest pumpkin, while Reece wanted a perfectly round one with a twisty stem. Adeline was scared and nervous the entire train ride and never cracked a smile, until they gave us juice and molasses cookies at the rides end.

Once you found your pumpkin they had decorating table with pom poms, feathers and bone ABC letters.

While eating our cookies they had this cool car rail, big enough for tons of kids to play on

When we got off of the train, the conductor asked " Who wants to blow the whistle?"

Since we were in the first car behind the engine, Emma jumped at the chance.

Pensacola Seafood Festival

Every September the seafood festival is a huge draw for crowds of people coming to try coconut shrimp that are as large as your fist, jambalaya in bread bowls and alligator on a stick. They have a giant pool of water for water dogs, where the sporting type get a running start and leap as far as they can for trophies. The kids activity area is where we spend a lot of our time. This year they had balloon kite races for every age group. Reece missed the 4/5 year old group, so he raced with the 6/7 year olds. Needless to say he was trampled and got his kite hung up on the half way marker. He thought he had won, poor little guy.

Emma was ready to go and even jumped the gun

Adeline thought she wanted to participate, but then realized that she missed mommy and didn't want to run with an inflated strawberry

Here Emma is painting a dead frozen mullet fish, then using gloves you lay it on the paper and ta da, artwork from dead animals

We made sand necklace art, here Adeline is pouring the pink sand herself

Reece chose to use every color and ran out of space in his dolphin necklace, before he was half around the table. It was very hot that day, around 90 degrees, and it brought back the memory of Hurricane Ivan wiping out the seafood festival 5 years earlier. It took 2 years for them to bring it back.

Yee Haw Go West Young Man

I tried in vain to upload the video of Emma singing about 10 different times and failed, so here is the still photos of her first performance at her new school. She will be in 2 productions this year. This was the finale, where the classes all came together and sang, Home on the Range and Buffalo Gals. Emma is in the 3rd row from the top.

Here were the audience members waiting for the show to start( mostly anxious siblings, excited to see big brother or sister sing)

Emma finally saw me in the audience right before the show ended and have me a smile. Her class sang, Don't fence me in, and did a line dance to Cotton Eyed Joe. I was proud of my little cowpoke. The next show will be a Christmas performance( which won't include her class) then one in the spring.