More from the Pumpkin Farm

This is a picture of me and the kids at the pumpkin farm a couple of weeks ago.  What a glorious day!  The temperature that day was close to 90 as I remember.  Today the temperature is 47 degrees and rainy and VERY windy.  So, I love looking at these pictures of us and our shorts and tank tops.

You might have seen in one of my previous posts that we spent a lot of time in the corn pool.  We also did a lot of apple picking!  The kids absolutely love picking apples and I do a lot of canning and baking afterward with our bounty.  Here, my friend Melissa's son enjoys an apple on the way back to the car. He is just old enough (and has enough chomping teeth) to eat an entire apple by himself.  However, he realized quickly if he dropped one, we would take it away and give him a new one.  He probably thought it was a pretty fun game, seeing how many times we would replace the apple.  We figured out his game after the 3rd or 4th one though, and he gave up and finished eating.

The kids enjoyed helping Nick climb some apple trees.  The jonathan apples were really picked through on the lower branches, and we had to work hard to get apples out of the top.  I pick golden delicious for apple pie filling, jonathan for applesauce, and honeycrisp for fresh eating.  I also got some Arkansas Black this last weekend when we went to Eureka Springs.  You can see I had to stretch up in the background, even with one of those apple picker things.

I love doing things like this with the kids.  I know they will remember it for the rest of their lives.  It has been a tradition in our family for going on 4 years now. 

I am hoping someday when they are all grown and have their own kids, they will take them apple picking and talk about how nice it was to go altogether when they were young. 

Apple picking also appeals to my love of getting our food fresh and local.  When we take apples we picked and make food to eat later in the year, it shows the kids that not everything they eat has to be off a store shelf.  Not everything has to be pumped full of preservatives so it can last forever in a grocery store.

I also love to get the kids outdoors doing things.  We have been a little lazy this year with exercising outside, but once we are out doing something, I am so happy we made the effort.  Every kid should have the opportunity to climb a tree and pick an apple.  If I had a couple acres, I would grow my own.  Maybe someday....

I know my friend Melissa agrees that our kids should be outside and moving around.  Of course this is not usually a problem with 2 year olds!

Nick figured out that these holes were for sticking your head into, then posing for the picture.  We had to remove him a few times from trying to stick his head into other people's pictures!

My son didn't want to, but because I asked him to, he reluctantly agreed to sit with Nick so he could ride on the train.  The rest of us were too big to sit easily in the the little car.  As you can see, my son is less than thrilled about doing this.  I can't believe how big he looks sitting next to Nick.

What fall traditions do you have in our family?  I'd love to hear about them...