Pumpkin Patch and Sword-Fighting!

Call us crazy, but our Classical Conversations community had our first two field trips on the same day! Aaaaahhh!! It was intense, but well worth the time and effort.

First, we started our afternoon at a local pumpkin patch:

Mary loves, and I mean loves, cats. She's giving this big hay cat a snuggle.

My big girl sure is growing up! Click here to see pictures from this same trip last year. It's fun to see the changes God can bring in a year! Our whole lifestyle has completely changed since this post a year ago, before Anna's diagnosis of Gorlin Syndrome. She couldn't go with us on this trip because it was too sunny. We'll be going back to the pumpkin patch with her class in a couple weeks, though, but we'll go early in the morning when the sun isn't so bad. I still need to do a post about my baby girl. Maybe I can get to that sometime this week.

The corn crib is always her favorite part of Tate Farms.

After the pumpkin patch, we raced back home to pick up Anna and the hubs, then we headed to Decatur for a Medieval demonstration! This was a combined field trip with multiple CC campuses, and I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped with this awesome event!

This is the herald telling us about life in Medieval times and the Renaissance. He stayed in character the entire time, complete with a British accent. The performers were a group from the Alabama Renaissance Faire, which is held the fourth weekend in October in Florence.

The man above is a nobleman, and he's showing off his collection of weapons. Notice the helmets on the table!

Mary and her sweet friend liked the chain mail. The nobleman guy made it himself, and he said this little piece took him over 100 hours to make by hand!

After the talks, we moved to a bigger room for the sword-fighting demonstration! It was awesome!

The lady in red is fighting with two swords! Everything they used was true to the time period, too, so that was really neat. The people who do this are serious about it. They get together every Sunday during the year (sans November and December) and practice four hours together. Wow!

Anna wanted me to take her picture. :)

After the sword fighting, it was time for some dancing - Renaissance style!

They're doing a dance called The Tangle. Surprisingly, they did actually untangle themselves close to the end, which is something the herald said they had never managed to do before! The music reminded me of Romeo and Juliet.

Mary and the Cossack fighter.

It was definitely a busy day, but both trips were a blast, and we had a great time being together with our CC family! Our next field trip is this Friday, and we'll be touring historically accurate replicas of Columbus's ships! Can't wait!