this afternoon we decided to enjoy the sunny skies and the crisp autumn air by heading out to the hills of pittsburgh for the harvest festival at reilly's summer seat farm.

the festival included so many activities and venues that we couldn't even get to them all. we managed to go on a long, bumpy hayride; walk through a huge pumpkin patch; run wild with lots of animals at the petting zoo; surrender to some face painting; zoom down a slide; roast some marshmallows; and otherwise just walked around and enjoyed the outdoors!

griffin and ainsley both seemed to enjoy the hayride. griffin really loved the pumpkin patch, especially trying to pick up as many pumpkins as possible, sometimes grumbling, "heavy!" when he couldn't pick one up. he also just liked being able to get dirty. ainsley enjoyed the pumpkin patch too, but not quite as much as griffin. i think ainsley's favorite was the face painting and the slide. besides the pumpkin patch, griffin's favorite was the petting zoo where he was able to get inside a huge fenced-in area and walk among all the different kinds of animals (little pigs, goats, ducks, sheep, and more). while he has been able to pet lots of animals before at places like soergel orchards, this is his first time being free to be inside with the animals. and he loved chasing them around. ainsley was definitely too sophisticated to be chasing around these dirty beasts!

here's a video montage of some scenes from today, including griffin chasing animals.




and here's some random pics from our afternoon (in no particular order and with no captions).



happy fall festival!