Apple Picking

It's Fall, so Nilda and I took Charlie apple picking. This way he was able to see where the fruit that we see all the time at the farmer's market but never get comes from.  On a Saturday, of course, because there's football on Sunday (unless the Eagles have a bye week).  You have to be outside a lot, but there are apple cider donuts so it's worth it.   We went two years ago, but this time was different because we had to time the drive with Charlie's nap and feed him when we got there.  Here's Charlie doing his typically admirable job of ignoring me when I want to take a picture.   "But there's dirt over there!"

It was finally time to pick apples, which means waiting in line to by a $.25 bag, then waiting in another line to ride a flatbed hooked up to a tractor to the orchard, to go pick apples and then come back to pay $29 for your work.  We put Charlie in the carrier, so he enjoyed sucking on the strap.  

The nice woman next to us offered to take a picture of the three of us, but Charlie was having none of it. 

The line for the tractor was long, but everyone in line was saying it was too far to walk to the orchard.  So we waited and killed time by distracting Charlie, making fun of other people in line taking even more pictures.  It looked like it was going to pour any minute and we seriously considered leaving and telling Charlie, "That was apple picking, Charlie! Wasn't that fun?!?!?" Because, really, what does he know.  But we stuck it out and made it to the orchard since we're such dedicated parents.  

Thankfully, the 20 minutes we spent waiting in line allowed us to avoid a grueling 10 minute walk.  Finally, we were able to walk amongst the apples.  And we ate a ton of them.  Both kinds: red, yellow and reddish-yellowish.   

Mary once wrote a blog post saying that if bugs aren't interested in the apples, than neither was she.  Mary would love these apples, and so did we.  

You've probably wondered what it would look like to watch Charlie eat an apple while in a carrier on your chest.  Here you go.  

 

We saw all these people with tons of apples and can't understand how anyone could like apples that much.  We're probably not the first people who went apple picking and didn't pick any apples.  Maybe people don't realize that people have already picked apples and they sell them in the farm market.  Really, who wants apples when there's plenty of Haagen Dazs at the bodega on the corner?

The 10-minute walk back from the orchard went through the pumpkin patch where all the misshapen, mud-covered pumpkins sadly wait for people to settle for them, saying, "I guess this one's good enough."  Here's the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Heller!" picture I had been waiting to take, where we carefully keep him out of the mud he so desperately craves. 

We made Charlie do the obligatory photo ops and then he was finally able to take a nap in his amazing, new big boy car seat (shout out to Aunt Julie Rocks, Aunt Caryn & Uncle Forrest!), which is all he ever really wanted out of the day in the first place.