Apples, Swings and Everything in between...

Our fall has been busy. We visited the apple farm {again} with Blake and Monica. It's our favorite.  If you live around here and haven't been to Bielke Farms, you're totally missing out.  Then we spent last Friday and this Monday making 42 quarts of apple sauce.  We had already made 28 back in September with Blake and Monica too.  

Mmmm, applesauce. 

We love everything about it. This was my first year to can it by myself (children under toe) and it was adventurous, as was expected.  Chopping, boiling, smashing, dumping, boiling again, and repeating can make you forget what's supposed to come next.  Meanwhile, the children were running around eating 14 different apples at once {because there's a giant box in the kitchen, so who wouldn't want to?!?} and hiding the fruit in places it's never seen before, like the pots and pans cupboard or the truck and cars bin.  Seriously.  I was finding apples for days, and  apple turd piles for the rest of the night, thanks to Emmitt who munches and munches and then finally decides he'll never be able to manage all that peal and empties his little mouth cavity on the ground.  I realize, I was asking for all of this when I "ignored" them for such long periods of time.  It just comes with the territory...but now we're eating sweet, yummy, delicious applesauce in return. 

 See, it was all worth it! =)

Here's last year's evidence of our apple trip. 

And apparently I sucked at blogging the year before that.  Oops. But I swear, we've been going here for at least four years now!

It was beautiful and the kiddos loved exploring the tractors. 

...and eating the apples. 

We picked Jonagolds this year because we went so much earlier than usual.  They were HUGE {like softballs, no joke} and delicious.  

And finally...

I'm a sucker for good swing pictures.  As documented 

Here

How is this girl getting so big?

This boy, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the swings if the alternative meant being FREE!!! 

AKA, running from Mama...

Hence the pictures I got of the back of him. =)

Once again, I just love Fall!!!