Vet Visit

A few days ago I noticed a spot on Joe's left thigh/hip that looked a little sore. Well, being a very clean little dog, he licked it incessantly. Unfortunately, this caused more harm than good and now the wound is much larger. I called the vet's office yesterday and got him an appointment for today. Since we only got him in December, I have not had him to the Vet's office yet and was unsure how he would react. He is a very good boy and was completely fine with the vet visit, even when they shaved all the hair from the infected area.

I invited my mom to go along as she is looking for a vet that is somewhat holistic. She, of course, brought her camera and took many pictures. Here are a few that document our visit...












Joe sits patiently, waiting for the vet to come in.













"Perhaps a belly rub while I wait?" asks Joe.













Joe thought the vet needed some kisses.













Here you can see the shaved spot. It is an angry red, but with the air now able to get to it, we should see vast improvements shortly. We have to wash it with a disinfectant daily, and he is also taking an oral antibiotic. He has to wear the E-collar (Elizabethan) so he can't lick it. He was relatively unphased by the whole ordeal, but I imagine he will be very happy when he no longer needs the collar!

New Glasses

Silly me...I was so tired last night that I completely forgot part of the reason why! Friday afternoon Sarah and I were watching television when she gasped and groaned. I looked over to see her holding the temple for her galsses in one hand and the rest of the glasses in the other. This is the second pair (same frame style) that has come apart in this manner in the last year. She had been complaining about not being able to see well, so I figured it was a good time to get an exam and new glasses. Here begins the fun!

Since Jeff got laid off money has been tight, but the kids were supposed to have insurance effective March 1. Well, as of March 6 I did not have any proof of insurance, and the application was "awaiting approval." When her glasses broke I groaned due in part to the fact that I wasn't sure if she had insurance yet and partly because we were going to a hockey game Friday evening and she would not be able to see without glasses! I got on the phone and praise God, her insurance had been approved. The woman gave me her policy number and I was able to go online and print a copy of her insurance card.

It was about 12:30...the game start was 7:35...we needed to leave home by 6:45ish. I jumped in the shower, threw the girls in the car and hurried across town to the mall where no one shops (long story). We go there because we can always get right in for exams with no appointment. We go to a place where they have an independent Doc within the place where they make the glasses. After her eye exam we went to look at frames and were informed that due to the severity of her perscription, they would not be able to make her glasses there, but could order them. This is one of those places who claims to be able to make your lenses while you wait. Seeing the obvious dismay on my face, the helpful optician suggested that one of their other stores could probably do them because they have more sophisticated equipment. After some coaxing, he finally called the other store so I could be assured that another 20 minute drive would not turn up futile as well. The time then was 2:50.

We arrived at store #2 around 3:15 and by 4:00 Sarah had decided on a frame and been measured, etc. The only hitch was that the "about an hour" claim, turned into 2 hours...because of her perscription...UGH!!!! Remember, we needed to leave our house, 20 minutes away, by 6:45. We were cutting in awfully close and Kyle was at home, oblivious to our chaos, thinking that we would be home at any minute and I would make dinner before we left for the game. The girls and I decided it would be a good idea to eat while we were waiting, so we decided to try a place near the glasses store that touted itself to be a bar and grill...yeah right! Granted it was Friday afternoon, about 4 PM, but this was no grill...it was indeed a bar! After standing in the doorway for a full minute and not even being greeted, we decided to go further down the mall to a TGI Fridays, also a bar and grill but more grill than bar!

After eating, we wandered the mall for a few more minutes and then headed back to the glasses place. It was only 5:45, but I was hoping they would be done. Thankfully, they were finished and we were able to head home by 6:00. We got home, said hi to Jeff, grabbed Kyle and went to the game. It was an absolutely hectic day, but everything did finally fall into place nicely and Sarah is very pleased with her new glasses!












Not the best picture of her glasses, but you can see that they look cute on her and that they are blue.

Whew!

What a long day! Last night my in-laws took the kids and me to an Amerks hockey game. What a disappointing game. They were playing the Crunch and neither team played well. The final score was 7 to 4 in favor of the Crunch. As if their bad playing wasn't enough, we had to change seats 3 times while we were there. One of the seats we had tickets for was broken, so we sat in the row above our seats, until the people holding those tickets arrived. Then we moved to some really horrible seats in the lower section. Finally, after the first period had ended, they finished fixing our broken seat and we were able to move to our ticketed seats.

We didn't get home from the game until around 10:30 and I had to unwind before I could go to bed. Of course, I had to be at work at 5 AM, so when I didn't fall asleep until after midnight, I knew I would be really tired today. Work was absolutely insane! I made more bagels between 5 AM and 10 AM than I normally bake in a full 8 hour shift. Another store near ours has closed so they can reopen with a new, improved store so we think we are seeing a lot of their customers at our store in the mean time.

On my way home from work, I stopped at a local mall where the Irish Import Shop was sponsoring an Irish program of sorts. There were singers and dancers (but no la-laers LOL!). One of my favorite groups was there, the Dady Brothers. My mother-in-law had picked up the kids while I was at work, so I met them there and we enjoyed the dancers and musicians for a couple of hours.




Dady Brothers,
John (left) and Joe




Sarah was taking pictures and wanted a picture of John Dady, who happened to be sitting nearby while another group was on stage. When she and Erin went over to ask if they could take his picture, they got a surprise...












John asked his daughter, also an Erin, to take a picture of him with my girls.
We also ran into a friend that I work with, Peggy.

















Once we left the mall, I was ready for a nap, but I went home and played around on the computer for awhile, leaving myself only about an hour to nap before church. The church we attend has 5 services between Sataurday evening and Sunday morning, so Sarah called her friend to see if she was going to be there tonight. Her parents were planning on going tomorrow, but said they could drop her off tonight, if we could bring her home. Then I also offered to take her big sister back to her college dorm (2 minutes from our house). Now, I am soooo ready for bed!

On that note...Goodnight!

Butterflies

Yesterday the kids and I went out to lunch with my Mother-in-law. When we had finished lunch, the girls announced that they wanted to go to Grandma's house and spend the night. After working for 7 hours on 3 hours sleep, then staying up even longer to go out to lunch, I was exhausted and saw an opportunity to get some sleep, so I let them go.

We have been trying for a couple weeks to go to a local children's museum, but it just hadn't worked out. Well, my mother-in-law took the girls today, and said the rest of us could go again another time. She has a membership that gets her and my father-in-law and all of the grandkids in for free so she can go as often as she likes. This museum has a butterfly garden where you can go in and walk around and see all the different butterflies. Sometimes they will even land on you. My girls both like it quite a bit and I got quite a surprise in my email this evening. Apparently my mother-in-law gave Erin her camera to take pictures while they were in the butterfly garden. I seem to have a budding photographer...

Epiphany on the Couch

Okay so I wasn't exactly ON the couch when this epiphany hit, but rather it was about the couch. As I was sitting in my comfy chair, cuddling with my baby (Joe...don't tell Erin!) watching home improvement shows I happened to look out my dining room window. It was at that moment that I realized just how wide that window happens to be. Now, I should be well aware of how wide that window is, since I put an air-conditioner in it every summer and take it out every fall! However, being inattentive to detail, I missed it somehow.

Now, it is important that I back up for a minute here. One year and eight months ago, Jeff's grandmother moved from her one-bedroom apartment into a studio apartment in a senior housing center. Her rather large couch was not going to fit, and having spent the money some years ago to get a very nice couch, she did not want to just donate it, so she asked if we might want it. At the time we had a hand-me-down that should have gone to the curb long before it was handed to us. It was a sleeper sofa, and it came into the house 5 years ago with much force and strong language on the part of Jeff and several of his rather hefty friends. Our house simply was not made for large items to come through the doors!

Moving on to the couch coming to our house. I called my Mom and arranged to have her meet me at Grandma's to get the couch in her truck and bring it to my house. A week or so before that, my Mom and I took a sledge hammer and various other tools to the hand-me-down sofa bed. Since it was so difficult to get into the house, we decided we would take it out the easy way! We sure did have fun! Jeff was mortified, as he really like the horrid thing. I assured him that it would be okay though, as Grandma was giving us her couch and soon he would have a much nicer, newer, cat hair free couch (I very much dislike cats but the former owners of said couch had 3) .

Now, remember how I said large items don't fit through the doors in our house? Yup! You guessed it...the new couch was too big to fit through the door. Our front entry consists of a door to the porch with a straight shot into the entryway, followed by a 90 degree turn into the house. The couch made it to the entryway, but would not turn the corner into the house. We tried in vain for about an hour to force it through, but it was not going. So...the very nice couch took up residence on the front porch.
This is the door to the entryway...the one the through which the couch would not fit!


















Back to the present. As I stared at the dining room window, I wondered if the couch would fit through it. HMMM!?!?! Finally, I got my tape measure and sure enough, there was almost a whole extra inch to spare. BUT, in order to have enough height, I would have to completely disassmeble the window. Oh, Kyle! I asked him if he wanted to help me with a crazy project, and knowing his mother well, he agreed. (I would have done it with or without him, but he knows it's easier to just agree up front than to get wrangled in later!) I did not relish the thought of carrying the couch from the front of the house to the back of the house, lifting it over my head and through the window, but that seemed the only way. Then it occurred to me that the middle (of 3) living room window might also be wide enough. It was! Thank God, because I forgot to mention earlier that it was only about 4 or 5 degrees outside.

After diassembling the window, with some difficulty, Kyle helped me navigate the couch through the window opening. All this time Jeff was upstairs sleeping. We got the window apart, the couch in, the window back together, and the furniture put back into the living room in just under one hour. When Jeff awoke and discovered the couch in the house, he asked how it came in. I told him through the window, to which he wondered if he dared ask how. I told him proabably not, and we left it at that. He did mention that he kept waking up, but was not sure why. Must have been my hammering to get the trim back on the window...LOL!

So now the couch is in the house and we have enough seating for all five of us without anyone on the floor! Amazing!
Yes, our little abode is a work in progress. The black "spot" on the wall is where the chimney from an old woodstove comes into the house. The discoloration on the wall marks where the surround was behind the woodstove. The crown moldings are down waiting for spring so I can finish stripping them and the ceiling is awaiting a finish after it had to be replaced due to the bathroom plumbing leaking through onto it. Eventually I will get it all back together, but doesn't the couch look nice there?

Here is the window through which the couch gained entry:
The one in the middle with just the sheer showing. Except for a few little dings in the finish, which needs to be stripped anyway, you would never know I took the whole thing apart!


The best moment during this whole process came when Kyle told me that he hoped we never had to take the window apart again. The look on his face as I reminded him that the couch would eventually have to be moved out again, was priceless!

Fun with Kids

Snowtubing
There is this great snowtubing place about 45 minutes from where we live. So a couple weeks ago I got some discount tickets from work and my Mom and I took the kids. What is snowtubing you ask? Well, you climb a big hill, sit in an innertube, and go flying down a well groomed hill complete with moguls.












This picture doesn't really do justice to the size of the hill, but it does show the nicely groomed lanes. For those who would rather not walk up the hill, there are two tow lines that one can use to be pulled up the hill. The waiting for those could be a bit lengthy however.












The kids had a ton of fun, even though my Mom and I froze our fingers and toes and noses watching! Erin, being the youngest and by far the shortest, had a tough time navigating the lanes once she got to the bottom of the hill. With all her winter gear and a huge innertube to tug along, she was having trouble keeping up with the big kids. Michelle, taking pitty on poor little Erin, told her to get in the tube and Michelle pulled her around for the entire 2 hours that we were there. Erin was quite the lady of luxury!


























Science Museum
Earlier this week, I took Kyle, Sarah, Erin, and Sarah's friend, Kelly to the Science Museum. Most of the exhibits at the museuem do not change, but the kids still love going and seeing the same things over and over again. Normally I drag them through the "educational" exhibits, that they consider BO-ring, then I allow them to do the more fun, hands-on stuff. This time I decided to just let them do whatever they wanted and oh did they have fun.

We played in a big stream table (my personal favorite), looked at optical illusions, put the kids faces on money, played the stock market, went on a submarine ride (just pretend), and many other fun things.
Those are some scary baby dinosaurs!












While Kelly showed Sarah how to make origami frogs...












Kyle explored an elevated maze that goes from the first floor to the second floor.












Next the kids tried their hand at being meteorologists on television.












I think the most fun was had when we visited a hands-on exhibit exploring the properties of matter. Sarah and Kelly spun themselves until they could barely stand...I think Kelly's face says it all:












All four kids checked out a bridge to test which type of construction would support them better.












Much fun was had by all. I think I got more tired out than the kids did though! I was exhausted by the end of the afternoon. After seeing all that the kids wanted to see at the museum, we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant for a yummy late lunch. After all that fun and food I was ready for a nap!

Dachshund Crazy!

My husband seems to think I have finally gone off the deep end!

It all started a few weeks ago when someone on the Dachshund list I belong to posted a picture of a "Super Weiner" that she got for Christmas. It was a little Dachshund figurine dressed in a Superman style outfit. Turns out the maker of that figurine makes a whole line of those figurines dressed in all manner of outfits. http://www.funtocollect.com/hotdiggitydog.html?gclid=CN2vitOrtIoCFRxOPgodcz7Cug This site has most of the collection.

So anyway, we went to the mall last night to pick up some things we had ordered at J C Penney. My husband wanted to go into the rest of the mall, so reluctantly I agreed. I hate malls! Anyway, I saw a Hallmark store and decided I must go inside. I looked around anxiously hoping to find the Hot Diggity Dogs...I knew that Hallmark carried them, but wasn't sure this particular store would have them. Well....













This little guy's tag says "Way Irish Weiner" and his side says "May you live long and be happy as long as you live." I informed my husband that for any holiday requiring gift giving, this is what I want. I told him that I want them all so I can build and fill a display case for them.

Yesterday afternoon my daughter was sitting on the floor with my "baby" and I snapped a picture because they were so cute!













So yes, I suppose I am a little nuts...but only for Dachshunds!!! I keep trying to convince hubby that we need to get Joe a friend, but he just isn't buying it. Oh well. I'll just have to keep trying!

Oh Poo!

Did you ever have one of those days that makes you wonder why you got out of bed in the first place?

Well, it started yesterday when my new pup, Joe, developed an upset tummy and made very watery messes. Fortunately Joe is a wise pup, and knows that hardwood floors clean much more easily than large area rugs, and that goo on Mom or the kids is a baaad idea. So, I put him in his crate and went to bed. Joe doesn't like to be alone so he barks for awhile until he realizes that nobody is going to come to his rescue and he ought to just sleep. Of course, this is the same bark he uses to alert us that he needs to go out, soooo.... After falling soundly asleep, I hear my name being bellowed from somewhere far away. Okay, so it seemed far away because I was sound asleep and had only been that way for about 45 minutes! Once the fog cleared, I realized it was my husband alerting me to the fact that MY dog had made a mess. I did the poop cleaning sprint and was back in bed in mere minutes and fast asleep in seconds...after Joe quit barking again...

I awoke this morning to a new day and more poo! Lots of it! So cleaning hardwood floors is easier, but that doesn't mean I want to do it every 2 hours! Oh, did I mention that one of my darling children also wasn't feeling well and must have put half a roll of TP down the toilet? So when I wasn't cleaning poo off the floor downstairs, I was sloshing it onto the floor upstairs. Whoever designed the bowl of our toilet needs to have their head examined! It has this indentation that runs the length of the back of the bowl, from the top, under the rim, to the bottom, at the hole. This is great for something I am sure, but NOT for plunging. First of all, it does not allow for a tight seal against the bowl, so the plunging is only about 1/4 as effective as it should be. Then, said indentation creates a lovely, GRR, "fountain" as you begin plunging. Believe me, you don't want a poo fountain in your clogged toilet. So, once I got the stupid thing opened up, after plunging 4 or 5 times every couple hours over a period of about 18 hours, I had to crawl around on the bathroom floor cleaning even more poo!

I imagine you have the picture at this point...I would clean poo downstairs, sit a minute, then run upstairs to plunge. It seemed that every time I left the room, Joe would make a mess and one of the kids, or my hubby, would yell for me to come clean it up. Then, back to plunging. Enough! The toilet is unplugged, the dog is somewhat better, and I am going to bed! Hopefully tomorrow will be less poopy!

That Pesky Tree!

Have you ever seen a tree embed itself into a fence? Well, I have a few of those in my backyard. Apparently nobody who lived in our house prior to us felt that trees do not belong entwined in fences. The house was built in '24, but I am guessing the fence is MUCH younger than that. Somehow several trees were planted, or planted themselves, along the property line and as they grew became entangled in the fence. One of these trees is quite the monstrosity. it is not a huge tree, but it is persistent. I cut all of the greenery off of it the summer after we bought the house, which would have been 2002. I cut it all off again in the summers of '03 and '04. Last summer I left the stupid thing to its own devises, and this year apparently the neighbor was tired of it and cut all the greens off and many of the branches that had grown fairly large in only 2 years time. I told him that I would work on getting as much of it out of the fence as I could, then I'd try to figure out how to "help" the speed of the rotting process.













The tree on the far left in this picture is the offending tree. The top of it had been cut off before we bought the house, but the darn thing kept growing! The very dead tree stump in the center of this picture is also entwined in the fence. The bottom of it is mostly rotted away, but the section in the picture is home to many ants and other creepy crawlies.













In this picture, all that greenery behind the puppy is from the nasty tree. This was taken in June of this year.

So off on a slight tangent, the other day it was kind of nice out, in that it was not raining. I went out to mow the lawn one last time before winter spreads its beautiful blanket over us. It was about 50 degrees, but I had on a sweatshirt and I was, after all, walking in circles, so I was plenty warm. Kyle was in back cleaning up papers and stuff that had blown into the yard with the autumn "breezes" we have been having. Well, Sarah decided that she too needed to help. She began sweeping the grass off the sidewalks, when Erin appeared, claiming that she too wanted to help. Truly, both girls just wanted an excuse to be outside... Erin had been given a job indoors which had been abandoned as soon as I went out. I sent her back inside to finish and sent Sarah in to get a jacket. Sarah was back out and sweeping in about a minute, and maybe two minutes later, Erin was standing on the sidewalk talking to Sarah, crying her eyes out. I shouted over the mower trying to find out what all the fuss was about and found out we had been locked out! It seems that Miss Erin did not want to get locked out, so she "unlocked" the door on her way through it. I guess it didn't occur to her that I prefer not locking myself out whilw mowing the lawn so the door was already unlocked. Being only 7 she does not really know how to check whether the door is locked or not until she is on the wrong side of it to unlock it.
So, what does one do when locked out of the house for 2 1/2 hours with the temp falling fast???





Cut trees out of the fence, of course! Kyle and I used a hatchet and bow saw and cut much of the offending tree out of the fence. We also got rid of a large chunk of the very dead stump in the fence.


















Kyle so 'enjoys' having HIS picutre taken, that he decided to take mine in some rather unattractive poses!




















So this is what is left of the horrid thing. I think I'll drill holes in it, fill it with fertilizer, wrap it in plastic and let it rot! Perhaps next summer it will rot away. Of course, I imagine that section of fence will need to be replaced since the tree has caused some of it to corrode away.

Monstrous Fun

Tiring of the same-old-same-old, we took the kids for a field trip to the local science museum, where a dinosaur exhibit is visiting for 3 months. I am not one to get overly excited about dinosaurs, but these things were cool.

They had one on display without its "skin" and it had controls that you could manipulate to move different parts of its body.

When we tired of the dinos, we went to check out a hands-on exhibit...the kids like those best!
Sarah checked out a couple of optical illusions.

Erin went inside this triangle of mirrors, only to find she was too short to see herself. I found her a stool to stand on, and then she could see herself.

Erin and Sarah test their balance on a couple of balance beams. I think the look on Erin's face says it all!

While the kids checked out the other hands-on activities, I tried my hand at building an arch. After 3 attempts, I finally met with success.

Meanwhile, Erin built an arch of her own that Kyle walked across...

and all three kids took turns spinning.
Here Sarah demonstrates.

Much fun was had by all, until I announced that each of them needed to find something they were interested in to do more research on for a science or social studies project. At that point groans and grumbles could be heard all around. Oh, well...they will have fun completing their projects, they just don't know it yet!

Yummy!

This is my little 4 lb. pie pumpkin that I bought at the store the other day. I decided that I wanted to try to make a pumpkin pie, my favorite kind, totally from scratch...except for the crust.

I went online in search of a yummy recipe and found one at about.com. Excited about making the pie, and tired from working all morning, I failed to notice that the sweetener in this particular recipe is honey. I like honey, but it has its place, and as a sweetener in most baked goods is not it! Of course, by the time I noticed it, I was half-way through mixing everything together.

In case you have never made a pie from a pumpkin, I will explain the process...

First you have to cut open the pumpkin and remove the seeds and stringy stuff. If you don't own a machete, good luck cutting open the pumpkin! We have a Wilkinson Sword and I thought for sure I was going to lose a finger. As I was scraping away the stringy stuff, my youngest came in and asked if she could help. I handed her a spoon and she began de-stringifying the piece I had given her. Next thing I knew, she had reached into the silverware drawer and pulled out a grapefruit spoon. Then, with that cocked-head look that only she can pull off, she said, "Wouldn't this work better, Mom?" I just nodded and agreed...it's best that way.

Once you have the thing cut into reasonble pieces, you coat the "inside" of the pieces with a light brushing of veggie oil, put them flesh-side down on a jelly roll pan and bake at 325 degrees F until the flesh is tender. I found for my 4 pounder, it was about 50 minutes. I also found that if I had cut the darn thing in half and put both pieces flesh side down, the guts would have been easier to puree. The edges sort of "seal" to the pan and create a steam bath causing the flesh to get super soft and juicy. Two of my four chunks did this. The other two were slightly more difficult to work with.

Once the flesh is softened, and cooled, you have to scrape it off the skin. The directions said to either mash it by hand, use a food processor (which I don't have), or use a blender to puree the flesh. I tried the blender and the pumpkin just sat there, stubborn and untouched. I started mashing it by hand when my oldest asked if I could use "that thing you use to make applesauce." He was referring, of course, to my food mill. We got it out and gave it a try. Much to his chagrin I rewarded his suggestion by "allowing" him to turn the handle while I scooped in the pumpkin. This turned out to be a very effective method for arriving at the desired consistency. My little pumpkin yielded about 4 cups of pumpkin puree.

Finally, the mixing and baking. I followed my recipe and had way too much filling, but it turned out pretty good. I am not a fan of honey for sweeting things that are traditionally sweetened with sugar, but it was tasty anyway, as is evidenced by the rather large missing portion shown below. I had intended to take a picture of the pie while it was whole, but I forgot. I made whipped cream to go on top and it was quite a hit for dessert tonight.

As I mentioned earlier, the only thing I did not make from scratch was the crust. I know how, but I do not find making pie crusts enjoyable. The package I bought had two crusts and I only made one pie this time...I guess I will have to make another one...oh, well! :)

This was quite an enjoyable experience and I will definitely do it again. Tomorrow my girls are going to toast pumpkin seeds...mmm!

Cooking Day

Well, we took our apples and made apple sauce and another yummy apple treat. The girls and I chopped up about 15 pounds of apples for sauce.

Once all the apples were cut up, we cooked them down in two pots...

Here's a close up of one of the pots...

Finally, we mashed up all the apples in the food mill...

There is a little cooking station set up right outside the bakery at work, so when I am making bagels in the morning, I can smell all the yummy foods that the chef is making for customers to sample. The other day he brought a pan of apples and squash all cut up into the bakery to put in one of our ovens. It smelled so good even though I am not a fan of squash. He mentioned that the recipe is in the current issue of the magazine that the grocery store produces. So while I was cutting up apples for applesauce and wondering about the sqaush stuff, I remembered that my copy of the magazine was in the dining room. I got it and tried the recipe...

1 butternut squash

2 apples (granny smith, but I used Cortland because that is what I had)

2 Tbsp EVOO

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 Tbsp Honey (lavender honey, per the recipe...I used plain old honey)

Cut the apples and squash into bite size pieces. Mix up all but the honey and spread the mixture out on a sheet pan. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes. Drizzle with 2 Tbsp honey.

I am going to take this to my inlaws for dinner tonight, so I will put the honey on it there after I heat it back up. The girls tried it without the honey and announced that it was "yuuuummmy!"

Here is a picture of all the goodies we made...

Tomorrow we will make apple butter in the crockpot.

Gorgeous Weekend

This weekend was positively beautiful for the beginning of October. The sky was bright blue, the trees are almost at their peak of change and the clouds look like big puffy marshmallows. Oh, and the temperature must have been near 70. After I got home from work, I decided it would be a good day to take the kids apple picking. We went to a "berry" patch about an hour from our home and were able to pick apples and raspberries. All in all we picked 1.2 pounds of raspberries and 31.4 pounds of apples. The apples took about 20 minutes to pick and the berries took almost an hour. An awful lot of work for such little reward. The berry bushes were pretty well picked over so we had to practically lie down on the ground to see any good berries. Here my youngest inspects a berry. She takes her berry picking very seriously...



















Once we were satisfied with the number of berries we were able to find, we decided to go check out the apples. I want to make applesauce and apple butter, so I went in search of McIntosh apples. The first row of McIntosh trees we found had no apples on any of the trees. I was about to be very disappointed, when I noticed apples on the trees in the next row. They were Cortland apples, but they make good applesauce too. We picked HUGE apples. Some were so big that they were nearly the size of my entire hand. Upon finishing our picking, we had to wait in line to weigh our finds and the girls let me snap their picture. My oldest threatened to drop the apples if I tried to take his picture...













We all had a good time, but all of us were quite tired by the time we finished. The place was mobbed with people and the warmer than usual temps for October made for some overheated moments.

So here are some picutres of the 'fruits' of our labor...LOL
One of our two bags of apples. Oh how I wish I could put a scratch and sniff link...these apples smell amazing!













And our slightly out of focus berries!







I am hoping I have enough berries to make a small batch of jelly, but I think we may need to supplement from a farm market or the grocery store.