Ode To The Orchard

So it's Chris on the mic once again. Sorry it's been so long since I've written, but I figure my wife does a pretty bang-up job of keeping you all informed of our family adventures. But I thought I'd log a little time on the keys. This latest adventure, if you haven't figured it out yet, was at the apple orchard-slash-pumpkin patch. This picture in front of the apple tree has a bit of a back story, and I'll explain coming up, so stay tuned.

Here's one of Ellie's favorite parts of the apple orchard: the face painting. The picture above is her waiting patiently for her turn. She's got a little bit of a sly look as she watches the girl ahead of her get her face painted.
And finally it was her turn. She chose a star. But not just any boring yellow star, oh no. It had to be a pink star, with sparkles. I guess this picture was taken before there were sparkles on it. But believe me, by the looks of her clothes, her pillow case, and her car seat, there were lots and lots of sparkles.
What would the apple orchard/pumpkin patch be without a canned photo-op featuring hay and pumpkins in the background? Ellie smiled nice and pretty, so we thought we'd try our luck at getting all three kids to sit nice and smile...
Yeah...that really worked out well...
But we did eat some hay, which is something new. What true South Dakotan hasn't eaten a little hay in their day right?

Ellie tried to keep Alex close...But there was a lot of crawling away, and more hay eating to be done. At least we tried I guess...
So Ellie got to go on a little "train" ride. Basically just a lawnmower pulling kids in little metal buckets, but it was a good time. But right smack in the middle of the ride came a little cloud burst. It rained pretty hard too...
Alex was fortunate enough to be in the backseat of the double-wide stroller. So he didn't get very wet. But you can see how Maguire's seat ended up...
So he came and hid in my coat...and got a pretty sweet hair-do out of the deal.

There were some pumpkins at the pumpkin patch. But they cost way more than pumpkins should cost, so Ellie just got to hold one. I thought they'd give us an invoice just for touching one, as much as everything else around there cost us. But this touch was apparently free, or no one saw us...
Ellie has a book about a scarecrow we've been reading lately, so we made a pit stop to take a quick pic with this one. She was a big fan of this one too, because it was a girl scarecrow: purple hat, pink lips, and braids.This was my favorite part of the trip. Not just because we were on our way home to take a nap, but because I was filling my face with Kettle Korn. It pretty much rocked. Notice my eyes are closed while I'm enjoying it, and oh yeah, I'm driving.
And this is one of Ellie's favorite parts of the trip. The free apple on the way home. Why is it free you ask? On our way into the apple orchard, there were random people picking apples from the trees. "Is that ok to do?" Carrie asked. "I'm not sure," I replied. And we left it at that. But as we were leaving Ellie says in a whiny tone, "I didn't get any apples, ooohhh..." So Carrie says, "Should we just go grab one?" I said, "Probably not..." But went on to say, "Maybe you go over there and take a picture by the apple trees, and an apple just happens to fall off the tree into your hand..." So that's where the picture of Ellie in front of the apple tree comes from. It was a delicious apple too. And I guess you could say it wasn't free. I think the $25 we dropped on pop, pork sandwiches, face painting, ridiculously awesome kettle korn, and that dinky train ride more than paid for one little apple...