Horrifying Harvest Hell

Y'all, if you have a sign a waiver form before you get to visit a Harvest Festival, prepare for the worst. I'm not kidding.

First, the hay ride: 

Wide open wagon being pulled by a tractor driving very fast around pedestrians.  I'm surprised Heidi didn't bounce out the back.  She actually ran away from us and scurried up on one of these wagons and wouldn't get down when I called her.  I thought for sure they were just going to let an unattended three year old go for a ride.

Second, the petting zoo:

If a puffy-eyed chicken will just sit there while little kids pet it and pet it and pet it and pet it, the chicken is probably sick.  There were other animals, like goats, sheep, midget cows, and frantic horses...but my friend's baby got his face BIT almost right off and they weren't even petting the horse, just standing near its stall. They had to fill out an incident report. Poor baby is going to have quite the shiner tomorrow.

Third, the archery range:

Daniel visited this Harvest Festival yesterday with another family, so he felt comfortable in the archery range.  I kept waiting for safety talks from the range master or at least some crowd control, but it was every archer for themselves.

I'm so glad I have enough sane hands on deck to help out.  Daniel did manage to walk right in front of Lula as she was pulling back her bow and got a sharp correction from me.  Jason kept trying to run out and gather arrows before the call.  I joked with the range master about the lack of skill and he replied, "Oh, I can't see a thing. I'm practically blind." Sure enough, he had coke bottle glasses. Why was he even there? How could he be a safe monitor?

Good job, Downens!  All the arrows either on the hill or on the ground in front of the bales!

Fourth, the boating/canoeing:

This activity was completely unmanned.  The storage for life jackets and oars/paddles was wide open and there wasn't an employee in sight anywhere.  People were just helping themselves and taking the boats out.  I learned my lesson a long time ago about taking any number of my kids in a boat and flat out refused to let them go.

I (we) did get some cute pics:

Selfie!

Genna is thoroughly annoyed with Heidi at this point.

Lula and her buddy that she loves so much!

I can't take this kid anywhere.

I was able to bribe the kids with little suckers to get them to leave the line for face painting (a friend looked like he had a flabby pickle painted on his forehead, so.... talent? Lacking.) and we were able to get to the van for my escape.

The best part of today was getting a text from Ian because he got an A on a history test.  I knew if he worked hard, he could bring his grade up from a C to an A.