Family Outings

We went on a few fun family outings last month. Darin gave in to my begging that we do something as a family labor day morning and he pushed his school work to the afternoon/evening. I need to work on my supportive school wife status. 

We went out to Fillmore Glen State Park and hiked the gorge trail. We weren't sure how far we'd get with the kiddos with us this time, but we quickly learned that this is a great hike for kids. There are 8 numbered bridges on this hike and Shae loved looking for all the bridges. In the end we only made it to 6, but we were happy with that.

 We brought the baby carrier just in case. Of course Belén was so excited to be a "baby" and be carried in it. Silly girl. She looks huge on my back. (She also felt huge I should add...Darin was carrying our backpack with lunch and a bunch of water bottles, just thought I should throw that out there so he doesn't look like a slacker making me carry the big kid :). 

 

 On the way back Shae decided he wanted to take a picture at each bridge while making a different face at each one.

 Later in the month we took a Saturday to go out to Grisamore Farms and do some apple picking. I love apple season in Ithaca. So many farms, soooo many different kinds of apples, so many apple goodies waiting to be made.

 We walked around and tasted each of the apples to find our favorite. We ended up picking a mix of Empire, Golden Delicious, and Gala. It's amazing how many different kinds of apples there are(and those 7 are just a few)! And while they all taste like apples (clearly), they all do have such distinct flavors. 

 She was chomping on apples the ENTIRE time we were picking.

 Ooo, a little tart.

 The bags were so big...we didn't realize we picked 25 lbs. of apples until they weighed them and we were like, "What!? 25 lbs!" It's just so fun to pick an apple off a tree. Once we started we just couldn't stop!

 Trying on the witches hat while we picked out some yummy vegetables at the farm store.

 The kids made some friends playing in these big pipes outside of the barn before we left. I love that Belén was trying to push the kids all by herself. 

 Our 25 lbs of apples. It really didn't seem like that many at the time...

We've definitely been enjoying them though. We've made a couple batches of homemade apple sauce, apple crisp (my favorite!), apple oatmeal, apple/cranberry salad, apple snacks all day everyday. Yum yum yum. 

We've actually gone through quite a bit so we'll be ready to go again next week when Amelia comes to visit (yay!) :).