Yummmm...Apples...

So. Wednesday I dressed us in fall colors and cute mud boots and grabbed my camera and off we headed to the apple orchard. Because apple orchards are prime real estate for picture taking, not just for picking apples. Lucas and I chose the very biggest bag and the nice little old lady at the register explained to us where to pick and why all the apples had funny looking spots on them, which honestly made me want to chose a smaller bag but it was too late...we were committed to the 1/2 bushel. Off we trucked through the orchard to the far end to find the very best apples. The little old lady was right, every apple was damaged from a hail storm early in the season. Lucas was helpful for about a millisecond, long enough only to pick an apple for himself to eat. But not with the the skin on, heaven forbid he might choke on the skin, and so I (gross) peeled off the skin with my teeth (which of course lodged the apple skin in between my teeth, even more gross). So while he gazed off into the sunshine whining about how HE WANTED TO GO HOME NOOOOW!! I very gently picked the most perfect apples from the center of each tree, hoping they would be less damaged than the ones on the outside. Once our ginormous bag was full and I had snapped a few pictures of Lucas eating his apple and swatting at gnatty-bugs, we headed back towards the farm stand to pay; me carefully balancing our precious bag of apples and my camera equipment, him complaining that the WALK WAS TOO FAAAAAR!!

Ah! But the fun doesn't end, because the nice little old lady told me we couldn't pay there, we had to drive down the road to another stand to pay, and if I were a dishonest person, I would have taken that as my cue to head straight home. But no. We schlepped over to the next farm stand to pay there, and wouldn't you know it!? They also had a TRAIN TABLE! Which means I was stuck there for another twenty minutes while Lucas flitted around a dusty broken train table that is ever so much more interesting than his own fully loaded train table at home, don't you know? We were finally back on the road again grooving to the Jonas Brothers (don't make fun...we're hooked) and we were about a block from our apartment when the garbage truck ahead of us slammed on it's brakes, which in turn made me slam on my brakes, which in turn made all those apples that I had just lovingly picked fall to the floor of my car in a sad bruised heap, which in turn made me swear.

All that is the very long version of: We went apple picking and Lucas got to play on a train table and I now have Macintosh apples growing out my ears. Pictures to follow.