Fall Spirit

It's been the best warm fall weather these past couple weeks and we've been going straight into all the usual fall traditions that we know and love.

I don't think I've baked all summer. There must be something from primitive human times that makes me want to bake up a storm in the fall and winter. The week we came back from Montreal I had off and baked everything: clean chocolate muffins, banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, and clean pb balls.

On my baking day I went for 2 20 minute runs and baked in between. When I went for the morning run, it began to rain so I headed back and then I needed more because 20 minutes didn't cut it so after my baking went back in the afternoon.

And I finally went to the trail nearby off Sunningdale in behind the golf course. It was only a 3.5 run there and back - or at least until I reached a point I didn't know where to go anymore and turned back. And so nice - lots of the trail is through a foresty area and along a river.
So nice I went back the next day too!

Last weekend, we went apple picking with Steph, Jon and Rachel. We know from experience (multiple experiences) that Appleland is crazy expensive and crazy busy. So this year, we decided to try Great Lakes in St. Thomas. We went to an orchard a couple years ago in Byron but they no longer have pick your own as of this year.

We are so glad we went here because it was the best! An only 15 minuets extra of a drive than Appleland. Where appleland requires an admission fee, at this one you can pay for just the apples if you choose by the lb, or if you want to go in the place area, its $6. But we got in for free because it was a rainy day and they said if we picked 10lbs of apples, it was free. Such a score! $16 of apples and free admission to the play area!

Outside of our $16 bag of apples, we also may have eaten about $16 worth of apples. I swear Logan probably had 4 or 5.

I don't remember seeing any other dead trees at the orchard but these. And we got slightly past them and I forgot about them when I asked Steph to take our picture. So now we have a family picture in front of the only dead trees at Great lakes. At least we're unique.

Apples at Logan's level! A distraction from him wanting to pick the ones off the ground. We are partially confident that he didn't eat any of those ground ones...

These kids are so huge now! 9 and 2 so fast.

We measured Logan and if the theory that your 2 year old height will be your height as a grown up, he will be 6 feet even! But who knows... with the C family genes, even 6'5' isn't out of the question.

Let's talk more about how awesome Great lakes is... that they have a little cafeteria! They sell slices of pie and strudel, apple cider and you get to sit in this cute little area to enjoy!

Plus they had festive apple colouring pages and crayons... anything kid friendly is our best friend.

After eating delicious baked good from inside (the best apple cookies Jon shared with us...), we went to play... all of us. Diggers for all! Although it seems that this would be best suited toward Logan, you can see that he's the only one not digging in the dirt here.

The classic fall corn maze. Usually the corn maze consists of us roaming about in random directions and randomly coming across the exit..eventually. Somehow with this one we got in and out in a bee line within something like 5 minutes. It was weird. So weird that Steph, Rachel and Jon went back in so they could get lost.

There was a lot of parent playing too. The play area was wonderfully vacant so we could dig with the diggers, zipline lots, and all get in the corn pit. If it was appleland, we'd be tripping on children.

Parent ziplining, Logan playing:

And they had farm animals too. Logan likes his animals... mainly so he can mimic their noises!
So.. Mooooo.

This kid wants "on!" everything (including the mosaic exhibit in Gatineau!). But this time he could go "on!". Anything with a wheel where he feels he is driving is gold to Logan.

And Sunday, we made for baking with our delicious apples! Logan helped with the apple cake before he went for his nap.

The final product thanks to my little helper. Its a layered apple cake and its amazingly delicious. Discovered this amazingness when looking for recipes 2 years ago at Thanksgiving!

And of course, the staple annual apple crisp. Whipped that up during nap time!

Even Logan's crafts from daycare are seasonal. This is his apple tree with his hand as the braces.. Logan is obsessed with tracing his hand so this craft is all for him. He asks for his "hand!" every time we colour!