Beware of Flying Pumpkins!

Here in Skagit Valley, the competition between modern built Trebuchets ruled the weekend. What is a Trebuchet, you ask? Trebuchets were weapons used in medival times to catapult large, heavy stones towards the enemy. But, in modern times, we've added a little twist. Instead of stones, we use PUMPKINS! We are so easily amused. LOL

As you can see, we take our competition held during the annual Harvest Festival very seriously. Safety first!

And if you think the sign was put up as a joke, the surveyor walking in the field wearing a hard hat should reinforce how dangerous it can get during the competition.

There were six Trebuchets in this year's competition. All of them designed and built by the individual teams. Each team was given six opportunities to catapult their pumpkins at a designated target. The winning team is the one with the furthest and most accurate attempts.

Each of them bearing their own signature name.

Some of the teams stayed true to the original design.

While others re-designed the weapon using more modern methods. The Gourdinator, pictured above, was the winner of the competition with their pumpkins flying overhead up to 1,000 ft. I tried to get pictures of the pumpkins hurling through the air, but it wasn't working out.

Here is the surveyor, measuring where the catapulting pumpkin landed.

His partner standing at the landing point.

The Harvest Festival is a small family event with tons of activities for children of all ages. At the Hay Toss, kids sift through all the hay to find candy buried beneath.

Many of the younger kids enjoyed the huge pumpkin air bounce. (Is that what they call these?)

Others stood in line for several minutes to have their faces painted.

What fun to roll a pumpkin at the bowling pins. Every child was awarded a prize after their turn at each game.

At the Tire Toss, instead of using pumpkins to throw through the hole, they used little bean bags.

At this game, the kids tossed small bean bags at the large painted pumpkin. The bags had velcro on them and would stick on the pumpkin's face.

Of course, we had to have the Ring Toss game!

There was a table set up so kids could paint pictures to frame.

Here they threw darts at the balloons.

Lots of kids lined up to play the Tic Tac Toe Toss.

We even had kids fishing for prizes!

And then there's the Milk Bottle game. I was never good at this game.

Here is a budding young artist painting her pumkin. She was so cute, painting her pumpkin with her sunglasses on.

Lastly, there were tables set up for kids, young and old, to build there own zuchinni race cars for competition.

As you can see, this required a lot of concentration.

But it was well worth the effort. Aren't these just the cutest little zuchinni cars? Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of any of the races as it was just too crowded. But I know everyone had fun, regardless of who won. What a fun day we had. I hope everyone else had a great weekend!