UpRooted

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Friday, October 25, 2013

Smile!

It was a long time coming, but she finally lost that tooth!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Last weekend we went to an apple orchard near Ellijay, GA with the Gents. We picked two smaller bags of apples, and purchased a very big bag of apples (for only $15). We first guessed how many were in the bag, and Aida wrote the names and guesses on our chalkboard (she likes for everything to be official).

Next we placed the apples in a straight line to count them,

then organized them by 5's to check ourselves,

and finally confirmed that there were 48 apples in all. Benjamin was the winner (only 2 off), though I decided to give all participants a few candy corn to welcome Fall. :)

We spent the next 2 hours peeling and chopping apples while listening to Classical music (well, the kids lost steam somewhere around apple number 30, but they were a big help. )

It took my three biggest pots to cook them all down, but another hour later

and we had a lot of applesauce! I left some in the pot b/c it was going to be used immediately in the making of fruit leather (something I've been wanting to try in my dehydrator for a while now). 48 apples (some rather large) ended up making about 11 quarts of applesauce. 11 quarts of applesauce for $15. Not bad!

I don't have an official picture of this, but there was a big mess to clean up when all was said and done :)

Woodring Campground

Our neighbors (The Gents!)

Pensive by the fire

The audience (as we awaited "the show")

The show

With a varied cast

The first canoe trip (Daddies with the littles)

Beautiful late September day at Carter's Lake

These two played and played

and giggled and giggled

Me and Songbird with the jokesters...
Songbird did paddle a little at the beginning and end :)

Such a crazy creature Hubry found

Welcome to October

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Lunch

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Acadia

The week before we moved, we went on a camping trip to Acadia National Park. It was one of those things that we knew we absolutely had to do with the kids before we left Maine, but that kept getting pushed back and pushed back, until time was slipping away altogether.

On our way out of town, we picked up our bikes, and after realizing we could no longer fit all the bikes in the car and on our 2-bike rack, we purchased a new 3-bike rack (which we are so thankful to have). After all the bikes were situated, we took off on the 3-hour trek to Acadia. Hubry and I had been to Acadia early in our marriage and done some of the more difficult hikes, but we were planning on keeping things a bit more low-key with the kids around. We mainly wanted to show them the beauty we remembered, and it was nice that it was in the middle of the Summer so that we could actually go swimming (at a warmer lake and a frigid ocean).

Overall, the trip was well worth the drive, though it would have been nice to have a few more days to meander and explore. We only attempted one hike, and after carrying children on our backs for a mile straight up the side of a mountain, we decided we better stick to bike and carriage trails from then on out. :) I mean, we're strong and everything, but that was quite a workout.

We went away with two main observations. 1. Acadia is such an expansive park with a one-way loop around it, that you really end up spending a lot of time in the car driving from sight to sight. With little kids this can be a bit trying, so we had to scale back our expectations quite a bit when we realized how much car-time was involved. 2. After having lived on the coast of Maine for a year, Acadia is nowhere near as impressive as it was before. In fact, we came away feeling like we had seen equally breathtaking views within 20 miles of our humble home. We were truly spoiled by natural beauty and easy-access to it living in Brunswick...

Here are a few pictures of the trip.