Apple Annie's 2008

Chris is finally home and has now been home for about a week. He brought a good friend of ours back with him and it's been such a fun week! The kids had all kinds of fun waking up Uncle Jared on the couch each morning (jury's still out on how much fun he thought that was!). . .

and we took our annual trip to Apple Annie's orchard.

We love Apple Annie's.

An early freeze this year meant they lost all their fruit crops,
but for people like us who drive all day to get there, they set up a Cornundrum.
Basically, they hide signs all over their orchard and you get to find them, you mark them on the paper and they collect them when you're done. This is to distract you so that you don't get upset that you've just drug your family halfway across the state to pick apples when there are none to be picked.

And so we looked,

we marked,

and we looked some more,

and some more

we found big bugs


and we looked some more

and what they didn't tell you was that most of the signs are broken!

This was an obvious one, but many of them were laying on the ground. And in a big orchard
that's just not nice. Although they probably thought it was funny!

(We did fix the signs we found. . . )

Once we found all the signs

we went to the pumpkin and vegetable side of the orchard.

This is Jared in the same spot he was in last year, taking a picture of the inside of the 'store,'

and the kids with pumpkins,

then with our handy map, we're out to see what we can find!

Year #2 for the pepper tastin'.

Turns out they're still hot!


Then it's time to teach which one's are hot and ready to be picked,


and tasted.

Smart boy!

Five minutes later and his eyes are still watering up!

Makes your heart go pitter pat, doesn't it?

Silas found a tractor and couldn't resist climbing on it!

This one's proof that I was there!