I'm here. I would have bored you the past 2 weeks with typical back to school stuff so I figured why bother. It's continuing to go really well, way better than I had planned or expected -I was prepared for a lot of crying (Aiden, Brady, me. The last one is just for effect, seriously, I am beyond good.). A's biggest issue and I must say I am surprised a little is, he misses me. Aw. He is handling it like a 1st grader though. ;) Telling me point blank he misses me instead of by acting out, crying or whining, not wanting to go. For that and everything he's doing, I am so proud of him.

All of which makes for even better, highly anticipated weekends, this being one of them.



Finally, for the first time, we as individuals and a family went apple picking. There are a lot of farms nearby to go and do this at so it's not like a full day excursion/adventure; we have just never done it. My head could have spun from just choosing which one to make a go of it at, but I went with a local paper advertiser and we headed north to a quaint family owned one.

We had a few questions like Aiden's"could he climb the trees?" and Brady's "could he eat any?". The owner said no to climbing (we didn't have to) but yes to eating, as many as we'd like. It was almost a requirement in fact as we'd have to know which variety we liked.


Sharing.

Boy did we eat our share.



They should have weighed us before and after we picked.



I have never seen so many apples.




More importantly, I have never seen my children eat so many apples.



We all have our own favorites now. Aiden likes the "purplely" ones (Macoun) as well as the not fully ripened Golden Delicious. He's a tart apple guy.



Brett, Brady and I love the Honey crisps. They were refreshing they were so juicy.



Colin liked any that didn't have a bite already taken out of them. He'd pick one either up off the ground or from the tree, eat it in it's entirety, then repeat.




The double fisting of apples that went on was unbelievable.




I don't condone that gluttony. I mean a woman picking while we were told us how rare of a delicacy a single slice of an apple is in her home country of India. Was she telling us this because of our actions or a geography lesson? Hmm. I actually don't think she was being a buzz kill on purpose because she wasn't near us when we were so ravenous, so I honestly do suppose the latter. It's just that we had about a million apples here in front of us, knowing some will end up rotting, while my kids want to eat them and I'm supposed to impose limits?



Not gonna happen. Plus, the man said so.

We're totally going back here for pumpkins. It was a barrel of fun.