Patch Training

It's that time of year again ..... HALLOWEEN is coming up FAST!!  After unloading most of the rig (I still have lots to go), I spent most of the day trying to remember where things are.  Those morning routines are hard to change when nothing is in the same cupboard.  I actually had to stop and think about where the dog food was for the kids!!

I picked up the mail in a box Amazon would be proud of.  I threw away three quarters of it.  We wonder why this country produces so much trash.  It's all the junk mail and advertising!!  It has now doubled since I get the exact same junk mail and advertising delivered to my house too!!  One entire garbage bag was dedicated to flyers for real estate ads and insurance companies.

I tried to wade through my boxes of fabric and get organized, but it was a lost cause.  No matter how I moved that material around, it was all still sitting on the table.  I doubt I'll have time this month to deal with any of it anyway.

At 6:00 I headed off to the Pumpkin Patch to pick up my work clothes.  What a beautiful shade of orange.  Not really my color, but it makes it SO much easier to see if the high school kids are where they should be.

If you have a work permit, you have a job.  I think there are about 90 signed up.  No worries, it won't last long.  In no time they will pare themselves down when they discover just how much work this really is.  You would think that $12 an hour would keep them on their toes.  I think I received all of $1.80 an hour on my first job.  We lose at least half to the Prom.

This year the entire group went around to the different attractions to learn how to handle the crowds.  There are the old standbys, the Hay Ride, the Time Travel Tractor, the Animal Farm with talking critters that tell you where food comes from by playing Tic Tac Toe and the Bounce Pillow (#1 with the kids by far).

This year there is a new "ride" that I'm sure will be the hit of the day.  This is the Super Slider, or at least a picture of one I got from the internet.  I'm pretty sure ours is taller.  Tall enough that I don't think I will be the one working at the tippy top.  Here's a fun tidbit ... they spray Pledge furniture polish on it to keep the gunny-sack-sliders moving right along.

The other new attraction is the Zip Bee.  It's a zipline ride for little kids, assuming they can sit on a big round disc and hold on while it slides off down a hill.  Look out at the bottom ... there's no way to slow down before you hit the stopper.  I'll have pictures of that later.

Let the fun begin!!  We open tomorrow morning and will continue every day until Halloween.  I'll be doing the same job as before ... giving breaks to all the kids (except the one at the top of the slider!!), tractor driver, clean-up crew, goat feeder, snack bar Manager, teenager wrangler and I'll probably have a can of Pledge in my hand.