Columbus Day Tradition

Our Christmas Eve program, our fun pre-Thanksgiving FHE lesson, homemade doughnuts on General Conference Sunday, Daddy's crepes for birthday breakfasts, Friday pizza and movie nights,  Top bí mật truyền thống mà chúng tôi sẽ không nói với bạn (haha-you'll have to google translate that one), raspberry picking on Labor Day, a trip to the zoo each voting day, Sunday morning letter writing to grandparents...

....we have some traditions like these ⇈⇈⇈ that we're diehard about, but we have a few others that we're a little looser about. 

Like this one....

apple picking on Columbus Day.

Today ended up being a gorgeous day off of school, so we headed to Crooked Run Orchards in Purcellville for the first time. 

We were a little nervous when we saw how picked over the orchard looked, but then Cami got brave and climbed the tree and got a little bucket brigade going with Adam.  (I was quite proud to capture the apple mid-drop there).  

When no one came to tell us not to climb the trees, it wasn't long before Ellie, Adam, and Emma were soon in the trees as well.  

Spence and his friend Ryan were too cool to pick apples, although the rest of the  kids begged to use their lacrosse sticks to reach the high ones. 


Instead, they entertained themselves by hurling rotten apples at this old dilapidated building that was literally crumbling apart at the foundation.  For as laid back as the management was about tree climbing, the apple hurling was kaboshed in short order.



 The day ended with a pick from the pumpkin "patch" (which was really just a big crate).   

After a mandatory trip to the "john" before heading home, we were entertained by the management's public jab at a local politician who is trying to build a road through the middle of their orchard.

And on the way home, Ellie totally collapsed.  The seizures, themselves, are very exhausting for her, but the new medicine she started on this past weekend completely thrash her.    Poor girl.


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PS  If someone can tell me how to make it so my font doesn't randomly change while I'm typing, I'd highly appreciate it.  It started off with the right font, albeit with the unwanted white highlighting, and at some point changed without provocation to a new one.  Don't know whether to blame stupid Blogger who designed the formatting or the stupid blogger who's typing the post. 

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Day 276---Saturday

This beautiful October morning started off with a little soccer comedy. Adam's team is lousy with a capital "L", but you could never tell by looking at his team's faces. They smile the whole time, they stop to look at flowers, they herd around the ball and steal it from each other, they kick balls into the wrong goals and still get excited, and one teammate loudly shrieks with delight every single time he touches the ball. They don't officially keep score at this age, but let's just say 10-0 would've been a generous estimate for Adam's team.
Later we went to Emma's soccer game which was slightly less comedic, but frustrating nonetheless. The entire game was totally lopsided in her team's favor with the vast majority of the game spent right in front of the other team's goal, but not a single one of the 15-20 shots they fired went in and they lost 1-0. Chalk it up to some good character building!

Then it was back home for some good old fashioned afternoon napping, oops I meant General Conference, in our ripped up basement (hence the tv on the floor and the ripped up wall in the background).



While Glen and Spencer were at priesthood session later that night, we did a little apple peeling and apple pie making. The kids think peeling apples is a special privilege that is worth fighting over.
I'm just glad I have their help at all. Apple pies would be a much bigger pain without my Pampered Chef peeler and my little peeler operators!