Apple picking ✽ Fall is here

Fall is here! I do miss the colors we would have had in VA by this time... VA autumns were gorgeous! For colors here, we have brown and yellow... acorns and dandelions :). But the temperatures are great right now! Andrew went out recently to play with his new baseball pitching machine (because he needed something more reliable than Bethi and I... ha!), and since I had Noah I went outside to watch :). Within a few rounds, Andrew was hitting a majority of the balls :)! He's really excited about that gift :). But it was so nice out that I've been trying to step out for a few minutes here and there to enjoy it while it lasts (because by Christmas we could be burning up again... haha :).) We've made pumpkin muffins a couple of times, and I'm looking forward to making gingersnaps today. My favorite thing to do in fall is to sit down with gingersnaps and coffee and read a book :).

The acorns here are falling with a vengeance though! I was spray painting our shelves the other day and one fell on the plastic slide surface, scared me so bad! (But then, I've been called "frail of heart" and told I have "the bravery of a chicken nugget" before, so that could explain that). I was talking to Daddy while he was grilling hamburgers the other day, and he was mentioning how hard they were falling. Right afterward, a plane passed over us, and at the same time an acorn hit the porch right behind us, and Daddy looked around and told me, "I think we were just bombed". Haha!

So this picture isn't fallish, but I had to take it when I saw 

them at the apple orchard, because like three days before we went, 

I was telling the little people about our old 

Cleome plant while reading a Winnie-the-Pooh book, when we 

were talking about different flowers having different names, because

 I read "snap dragon", and Peter hollered, "What?! You said dragon,

and there is not a dragon on that page!!!" :) 

While we had our friend over last month, we went apple picking with my Grandparents and aunts and uncle :)! Our family alone picked 85 lbs. of apples in 17 minutes, and then my aunts and Grandparents each had a bag... many hands make light work ;)!

Peter L.o.v.e.d. this "teeny apple". He was too cute, because he thought it was soooooo cute, haha :). He got a couple like that and just carried them around admiring them, heehee :).

 Bethi and our friend.

Johanna insisted on dragging alllll the buckets and the cart, etc. down to the trees at first, and my Grandma was just laughing at the company doing all the work. But once we actually had apples, she sat down and asked if we'd pull her instead, haha!

Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Amber and Uncle Jason treated all of us to apple slushies :). (I think ordering the slushies and paying for the apples might have taken longer than picking the apples, haha.) They are just apple juice and ice, so even Noah go to join in the fun by finishing off Mama's :). He loved it, it was cute :). Mama made apple pie and dried apples and apple crisp and apple butter with the apples we picked, and we where still eating fresh apples for weeks!

Johanna has five kitties at home, and she was really missing them, so when we got to my grandparents I had to find Rissa and show her off, heehee :). This kitty is 17 years old! Daddy found her as a tiny kitten under his car, and we kind of "grew up" together until Daddy became allergic to cats and he gave her to Aunt Tessa. Aunt Tessa is renting and can't have cats in her house, so Rissa is stayed with Grandpa and Grandma. She used to be a really shy kitty, but over the past few years she's really been mellowing out, and she actually laid on the dinning room floor the whole time we ate supper, instead of running under the bed as soon as we set her down. She's a sweetie <3. She was really sick a couple years ago, but she's doing amazingly well for her age now! As Tori loves to point out, she's so dainty, haha :).