cotton pickin' apples

yes, it seems a little early for apple picking, but that's just what we did on friday. it was opening day for the honey crisp apples so that's the day we go. although, come to find out, mom doesn't really care about the honey crisp or the empire apples so she'll be going again in another couple of weeks. it was a family tradition growing up. we'd go to erwin's orchard, pick apples, get donuts, go home and eat high rise apple pancakes that my mom would make for dinner that nite. since hayden was born the tradition has continued. i've been with him every since he was 8 months old. this year myself, hayden, talan, jenn, rainah, mom and dad all went.
they open at 9am so we got there a little before 9. there was a huge line. i hope somebody told these people that honey crisp were apples, not the cereal. anyway. after standing in line for about 20 minutes we were told that the honey crisp crop was small this year and by the time we got out there, they might be gone. wonderful. we stood in line for probably a little over a half an hour and then took the tractor ride out the the orchard. we each probably got less than half a bag of the honey crisp and then we headed over to pick some empires. as we were finishing, dad looked up and said the rain was moving in. we waited for the tractor and shortly before it got to us the rain started coming. i had a plastic rain cover for the stroller talan was in and dad covered rainah the best he could. it pretty much started pouring and the driver decided to make every stop and wait for people to mosey on and off before taking off for the next stop. oh well. last year it was cold and rainy. what's a little rain ever hurt?
we make it back and then wait in another line for about a half hour to get our donuts. we get to the front and are then informed they sold out of the sugar ones. so we got to wait another 10 minutes until they were done. by that point, the rain had stopped and the people had all left.
rainah really enjoyed her apple and i wondered how in the world hayden ever ate his his first year since he didn't even have any teeth at that point. talan posed for a picture but he didn't really eat it. he just got to suck on the pesticides that were on it.




hayden actually helped quite a bit this year. he would pick the apples:
and place them in the bag if they were good:
or do this if they were bad:
everybody loves to eat apples:


talan and papa before the rain started to fall:
the sky isn't looking so good:
showing off what we picked before the rain came down and the cameras were put away: