Apples, Apples, Apples

This week the girls and I decided to go apple picking. The girls had a day-off of from school, so even though mom was a little under-the-weather, we headed for Jonamac Apple Orchard, as recommended by a friend. Most of the u-pick farms around here have been turned into tourist destinations which are more about entertainment than farming and this one is no exception. The girls may have no concept of what a real working farm is like, but they sure had fun.

We started in the "barnyard" play area designed especially for kids. Here they are climbing on stacked hay bales. (Seriously, I have spent many a summer on a working farm. Fortunately, I was too small to throw hay bales, but I know hard work when I see it. In my mind baling hay was never associated with fun or play.) The girls loved this, especially Paige. I should seriously recreate this in my back yard!

The tube slide was also pretty fun and fast.

Who needs sand when you have corn kernels?

(This was my personal favorite.)

Water pump duck races

Okay, enough play. Now it's time to get to work. We picked a 1/2 bushel of blushing gold apples.

Here we are with our apple cart in the orchard.

Apple picking and eating

The apple picking was very easy and we were done in a flash so we took our apples to the car and then decided to take a ride on the apple train.

The train was so cute and the girls loved it because the driver "went really fast!"

Since we hadn't had enough fun yet. We also decided to try out the corn maze. This year the maze was designed like a penny to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday.

This was our first time in a big corn maze. The maze was divided into two parts, so you could do part 1, take a break and then do part 2. Part 1 wasn't too bad, the girls and I were not able to keep track of where we were but some trivia clues helped us to find our way.

Here are the girls on one of two bridges in the maze.

Now, part 2 of the maze was a different story. We, along with everyone else in this part of the maze, were lost and could not find our way out. After about an hour of wandering around and coming up on the same dead-ends again and again, plus realizing that you can't just "quit" when you are in a maze, mom made the decision to forget finding the exit and just backtrack out the way we came. Fortunately, once we adopted this strategy we were out of the maze in 10 minutes. We left through the entrance, but at this point we were happy to just be free!

A note about this picture: In the evening, the maze becomes haunted. When Paige saw this board, she wanted to take a picture so much. I told her we didn't need this picture, but she really wanted to, so I told her to hurry up there and I snapped a quick picture. Once we got home, and looked at the picture, I laughed at her tongue out pose, which I hadn't noticed when I took the shot. The funny part is that when I showed Paige the picture she wanted so badly, she took one look at the fake blood and started gagging. Now she can't even look at it! That was worth it.

After our maze adventure, we needed to replenish, so we stopped by the orchard store for some hot apple cider, apple donuts, apple dumplings, and a caramel apple to take home. We definitely got our fill of apples and now I need to get started making some applesauce!