Thursday, April 14, 2011

on the farm

Spring break came and went around here. It was great to have the kids home during the day. Our break started off kind of slow as one kid was laying around sick, but we were able to get in a day trip and enjoy a weekend of sunshine :)
We went to Fair Oaks Farm. I guess the best way to describe it is that it's a big "commercialized" farm. There are some 80,000 cows there, but there is a whole tour center to attract visitors. You get to tour the farm, see the processes, they have a birthing room, a kid's play activity center, outdoor activities, a movie theater and of course a cafe with lots of dairy choices from grill cheese, chocolate milk, cheese, and ice-cream....yummy!!


The buses were spotted like cows that took you around to view the cow area's and feeding places.

This was the milking area. (above) They call this the "dairy-go-round", which the cows need to get on to get milked. of course the name alone was cool for the kids....
And they got to practice milking themselves.....

We were able to see 2 cows being born that day! It was pretty cool. The above picture was the cow being born and the mommy licking her clean and then we went back to the birthing barn later in the day and saw another cow being born, but we also got to see the cow from earlier----she was in the "cow nursery". So the picture below is about 2 hours after birth :)
It was so cute to watch the cows trying to take their first steps! Usually within about 30 minutes of being born they would try to stand up. It was just so cute and the kids got lots of laughs out of that.



They also had this 3D or 4D movie theatre. It was a super cute movie. Of course being 3D was cool for the kids, but then they also had these air hoses built into the back of the chairs and misters. So in the movie when it showed the cow being milked, then they pretended to squeeze the milk at you, and simultaneously the misters sprayed a mist............so the kids were all geeked about how cool the movie was. Or like when the tractor rumbled, your seat actually vibrated.........cool stuff!



We finished spring break with a day of WARM weather and sunshine. It was so good to have, I think each of us were just soaking it in. Here is Aidan and Bella lounging together!!! So cute!!!