Johnny Appleseed

In my circle of blogging friends I have seen a lot of posts about apple picking and those friends are pretty spread out across the country. It looked like so much fun with sprawling rows of apple trees and gorgeous pictures of their children filling wooden buckets with delicious varieties of the beloved fruit. I am pretty sure that with us being in California, we are probably served a fairly unique experience when it comes to time honored seasonal traditions like this and I don't mean that in a good way.

Unfortunately, apple picking did not turn out to be the adventure I had envisioned. For one, it is hard to get into the Fall spirit when it is still 90 degrees outside. More importantly, we traveled to the small farm town of Oak Glen to get away from it all, only to find every other Southern Californian had the same idea for that same particular Saturday so the traffic, parking and crowds were beyond ridiculous. Once instead the farm, the actual area we were restricted to picking apples from was quite small and we only had a choice between Rome and wine sap varieties, one which is not my favorite and the other I had never even heard of. Setting all those facts aside however, the kids still got a kick out of picking the apples off the trees and I think it would be fun to venture back up there later in the Fall when the temperatures are a little cooler and it is no longer the trendy thing of the moment. Even if we cannot pick apples, it is just really pretty in Oak Glen and I have fond memories of my Grandmother taking my brother and I up there every year.

Here we are eating breakfast at Apple Annie's with Joe's parents, grandparents, sister and our niece and nephew. I am including the one of Jake and I so you can see he still was not feeling 100% and therefore not really in a picture taking mood. Joe thought his expression was hilarious:

Here we are at Riley's farm as Joe helps Jake pick the perfect apple:




Jadyn concentrating very hard to pick her perfect apple:









One might consider the last two photos previews of what is to come as we briefly visited the small pumpkin patch at Riley's last weekend. You see normally we would have already made it to the pumpkin patch but with Joe in Yuma off and on all month and the kids being sick, we have yet to go and frankly now I am feeling the pressure to go as Halloween quickly approaches. I really want to avoid going over the weekend as a I fear a repeat of the whole Californians flocking, lines, crowds, traffic, etc. However, the thought of waiting until next week seems so last minute and I did actually plan on having the kids carve the pumpkins this year as well as making candy apples. While I am frustrated that they got so sick so early in the cold/flu season, I am trying to look on the bright side, which is that they did not get sick the actual week of Halloween and they are finally on the mend. And I am not trying to complain at all. I just want to keep things real. I don't want to give everyone the impression that every venture we partake in turns out to be some magical fun-filled success. Apple picking is the perfect example.

So from apples to pumpkins, 90 degree weather or not, it appears Fall is upon us.