Fall–when the air starts to turn crisp, sweater weather officially arrives, and everything pumpkin spiced invades EVERYTHING. It’s also the perfect time to take your kids out to local orchards and take in all the fun that comes along with them. Pick out a pumpkin or 12? Check. Saunter/get lost in a corn maze? Check and check. Use an apple slingshot? You know it. Let the kids run all their energy out on a huge playground? Absolutely. Hay rides? Check, please. Pony rides? Not this year, but we could have. Consume awesome food made at said orchard? OH YOU KNOW WE DID THAT. Apple cider for the win, my friends. FOR.THE.WIN.

This year we took trips to different places over two weekends. First, we hit up Oregon Dairy in Lancaster County. Our plan was to do the corn maze, but we didn’t have a chance to. So, we ate at their restaurant and the food was fresh and awesome! And, we let Sophia and Maddie pick out some pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. Later that night, Sophia begged to go to a pumpkin patch again. That trend repeated for about 56 consecutive days, roughly.

And then, this past weekend, we went to one of our favorite local orchards, Linvilla Orchards. It’s a blast–and packed with people–every time we’ve gone. Last year, we did apple picking for the first time, and it was fun and tasty, of course. Not only did we bring home some awesome apples, but we picked some peppers and tomatoes, to boot.

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This year, we did as much as we could handle. The corn maze was huge. To be totally honest, I’ve never been in a corn maze before–so this was a first for me. And it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Why? Oh, come on, you know I got lost! This was a pure free-for-all-find-your-way-we-will-give-you-no-help-type of corn maze. It made it more interesting, to say the least. Especially once Sophia decided she was the line leader and that she would lead us out. Did she walk out first? Yes…

Before we hit the corn maze, though, we launched some apples as far as the eye could see. Apple slingshots are AWESOME. Seriously. Stuffing an apple in a slingshot and just letting that puppy fly as far as possible is really fun. I had no idea it would be as fun as it was. Linvilla really does offer so much to do with your family. If we wanted to make it through everything and really give each thing the time it deserves, we’d have to go for two days straight. Two full days.

The last thing we did was let the girls pick out some pumpkins. We chose the smaller-sized pumpkins, because we just don’t have the room for GIANT pumpkins. We took so many pictures while we were there, that I could have done an entire post of nothing but photos and videos.

Sarah and I talk a lot about family traditions and what things we want to make traditions with our family. Both our families growing up had a lot of traditions, and we don’t just want to pass on those ones–we want to create some of our own. If going to orchards and pumpkin patches and dairy farms every October is one we can turn into an every year thing, then I am all for that. I’ll admit, I don’t always do well in crowds, they drive me insane. But, I’m realizing that for my kids to get the chance to really see all there is out in the world and to experience a lot of the same fun things I experienced as a kid–then I have to suck it up and deal with crowds. And that’s just what I’m going to do. Just don’t expect to ever see me out on Black Friday. I’m not that crazy!

If you really want to have a blast doing Fall-type activities, I highly suggest you check out both Oregon Dairy in Lancaster and Linvilla Orchards in Media. And no, they didn’t ask me to write about them or pay me to write about them. We just loved our experience there so much that it felt like it needed to be said. One thing I want to do in the future is a night hay ride, which they also offer for groups. Hay rides are awesome, so why not do it at night?!

Next up is Halloween and that’s going to be a whole other story!

What activities do you do with your family and kids in the Fall? What have your experiences been like, good and bad? Share in the comments below, on Facebook, and Twitter!