More Fall Fun!

Okay, first off, a confession: I am pathetic. On my laptop, I had a drive that I could pop my photo card into and download photos. Now, with the desktop, I have a little USB card reader. Unfortunately, I have to unplug the printer from the USB port to use the card reader, so that one hugetastic extra step (yes, that was said with eyes rolling) means I take forever to finally get photos downloaded and blogged about. So, this is a catch-up post...

Thursday

On Thursday morning, the kids and I went apple picking at Eplegaarden, which is just south of us. We picked Haralson, Cortland, Jonnee, and Redmax apples. A total of 14 pounds...the orchard has a $10 minimum for self-pick and at $0.75 per pound, that is around 13 pounds. While I completely understand it from a business point of view, the minimum is kind of a pain from a mom-of-apple-pickers-with-short-attention-spans point of view.

After apple picking, we posed for "How Tall This Fall" pictures, since this would be a fun annual activity.

Since then, we have been enjoying raw apples for snacks as well as an apple crisp on Saturday and an apple pie on Sunday. I was planning on making a bunch of applesauce to freeze, but I'm not sure we have enough apples left! We may need to make a second trip this fall!

Also on Thursday, we went to Farmer's Market and bought the fixin's for this:

That's fresh mozzarella from Farmer Johns' (where we also get our squeaky curd for snacking) and fresh tomatoes and basil from other vendors. Add a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar and voila! Of course, Thursday night supper ended up being an exercise in contrasts. We had the classy, wholesome tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad with chili mac (macaroni, Hormel's chili and Velveeta...the ultimate in class and nutrition).

Friday

On Friday, Mama had a hard time waking up, and discovered that while she was dozing, Bug got hold of the digital camera and took a whole bunch of picture. They are actually fairly entertaining to see what captures his attention, but I thought this was the coolest of the bunch:

I have no clue what it is. It shall remain one of the great mysteries.

We did our regular library run on Friday afternoon, so stacks and stacks of more books to read! One group of books of note that we have discovered are a couple of easy reader non-fiction: Pebble Books and Pebble Plus Books. We discovered a whole slew of Pebble Plus animal books on the shelves at the branch library about bugs and ocean animals and have been putting more on hold since then. They are short (approximately 100 words) and have great pictures, so we can read a whole stack in one sitting and after we have read them several times, Bug can "read" them to himself by looking at the pictures and remembering the text. Right now, we have a bunch of books out (and on hold) about seasons, fall activities, and getting ready for winter. They have a whole bunch of beginning science, social studies, health, and animal books. They should keep us entertained for a while!

Saturday

Saturday, the kids decided that they need to express their creative side. Bug specifically requested cutting and gluing, so we got out some construction paper, scissors and glue. Bug made a trio of monsters:

And Bean went a bit more free-form:

We ended our Saturday cheering on the Hawkeyes, who were here playing in Wisconsin. It was on network TV, so we actually got to see the game. BB wasn't given a choice of who to cheer for. With Kitty Daddy's coworkers trying to dress him in Badger red, we had to counteract!

The first half was as good as a game could be with no noticeable offense on either team, but we ended up losing. *sigh*