Monday at Krupp Farms

Oh my! WHO are these strawberry kids??!! It's the Pahman kiddos visiting Krupp Farms on Monday with Grandpa and Grandma Jones and their mommy! We had SO much fun!
Grandpa Jones and I picked up Di and the children from the Hand grandparents' house early Monday afternoon. It was an amazingly beautiful day and we were hoping very much that Krupp Farms would be opened ... and it was! We missed picking strawberries with the children by about 10 days ... it is now raspberry picking time, but you must arrive at the farm by about 9:00 in the morning to do that.
Since it was well into the afternoon, we just made a beeline for the petting zoo! It is not a very big zoo, but just quiet and simple with a few animals.
The children were so excited to see the animals! Christopher ran SO fast to get there!

Emma's favorite animal, since forever, is the PIG. She has quite a collection of stuffed pigs at her house, and for some reason, she just loves this animal. The two pigs they had at the petting zoo were NOT small pigs. There was a dark gray pig with a pink spot on his nose, and there was a classic pink pig! Emma was so happy to see them!
Remember how excited Christopher was to see the animals? He wasn't too crazy about the smell. Almost every picture taken of Christopher, he has his hand pinching his nostrils, to attempt to block out the stinky smells. I thought maybe he would end up not liking the animals because of the smell, but he just kept blocking his nose and enjoying himself hugely!
Here is a close-up of the two pigs. Diana actually took much better pictures of all of the animals. She is very good with all kinds of animals ... whereas I am always a bit squeemish around them.
This is Emma, so amused at listening to the two pigs grunting and talking to us. At this point, we hadn't bought the food yet to feed the animals and they were a little upset with us!

Just outside the petting zoo building, there is this old silo that is being used to house two roosters and two hens. The roosters were crowing like there was no tomorrow!
There was a nice cage of rabbits ... notice Christopher enjoying them while blocking his nose ... he cracks me up!
At the main building, you can purchase cones filled with pellets for the animals for just a quarter! The goats and sheep were pretty polite about eating out of the cone, but if you got too near the pigs ... watch out! Diana took a really good picture of them close up when they saw that we had food for them.
Emma is trying to coax some little chickies out to eat some of the pellets ... but they weren't too interested in this type of food ...
However, Matthew was something else to watch with these little chicks. You have to understand something about Matthew ... first of all, he is three and generally not terribly patient about most things. But you should have seen his patience with these little chicks! He was SO careful and quiet and gentle ... it was really precious to watch him feeding them ... and for some reason, they would eat out of his cone but not out of the bigger kids!

Emma and I were cracking up at the pigs. The dark gray one was a real HOG and hardly let the pink pig have any food. Emma kept trying to toss the food back to her, but the gray one would intercept it and make the most awful sounds in the process! Emma declared that the pink pig was her favorite and scolded the gray pig very much for not sharing.
The goats and lambs would eat right from our hands ... their tongues were a little sloppy and they tickled our hands as they ate ...
Matthew was happy the whole time we were there. He loved this little riding horse ... look at his beautiful smile. There were millions of beautiful flowers there, and I just couldn't resist showing you this picture!

Can you see Grandpa Jones checking out the raspberry bushes? Perhaps next week we will run out here in the early morning and pick some.

We washed up really good after feeding the animals and went over to the Milk House for our mini-ice cream cones. All of us got swirly ones, except Matthew who wanted all chocolate. The kids got colored sprinkles on the top and liked it very much.

We had a lot of fun taking pictures of our strawberry kids ... what a wonderful time we had at the farm today. Let me tell you, life just doesn't get any better than this! Thank you, LORD, for this beautiful day, these precious grandchildren, and wonderful memories You are allowing us to make!

P.S. I have a bunch more pictures to show you of our play times yesterday and today, but they are going to have to wait until tomorrow!