Apple picking

Today, we spent the day in Michigan with our friends the P. Family and the H-S family apple picking.  It was a bit overcast and cooler than it has been, but it didn't rain and there were still lots of apples on the trees even though it was late in the season.  Here are some pictures from our day:

M. with G. and A. with L.  (The big girls volunteered to carry the babies in the backpacks.)

Picking apples... and eating them.

E. and A. with L.

K.

E. (In my ratty black sweater that doesn't come off from September through May.)

After we picked all the apples we could manage, we found a place in the orchard to have a picnic.  It was a beautiful orchard and not nearly as crowded as some we have been to.

Some of the picnickers

More picnickers

The babies strapped in their chairs again.

But, since it wasn't muddy or wet, they were let loose for a while.

The big kids had fun, too.  Here is A. holding her father, J., and baby G.

We came home with 7 half bushels of apples:  1 of Macintosh and 6 of Jonathan.  Here they are all lined up in our mudroom behind baby gates.  G. and L. were quite fascinated with the bags of pretty apples and we had visions of them doing a "Ramona".  You know,Ramona the Pest where she goes to where the apples are stored and takes one bite out of each apple.  When her mother asks her why, she replies that it is because the first bite is always the best.  (And yes, a baby without molars and only a few front teeth can do this because A. at the same age did exactly that.)

I see much time spent with apples in my future.  As well as being for eating, these are going to be turned into apple sauce and pie filling and maybe even I'll be adventurous this year and dry some.  Oh, yeah, I also came home with three more pie pumpkins.  Hey, they were cheap.