20 pounds down....

...19 to go. Unfortunately I don't mean my weight. I wish I was 20 pounds lighter but no, I am referring to apples.

The kids and I went to my parents this weekend because they didn't have school on Friday. On Friday we decided to go apple picking. I need to preface that before leaving home Monte joke with me about having fun apple picking but not to come home with 40 pounds of apples. He said it thinking - I'm going to give her an outrageous number so she gets my point of not coming home with a ton of apples. On the day of apple picking we got a little carried away. We try and go apple picking every year (except for last year when the orchard was out of apples) and I usually pick too many. In past years the apples have always been small and at the top of the trees. Luckily I'm tall so I could reach the ones everyone else couldn't. The orchard we went to this year had so many apples. They were low enough for the kids to pick. The apples were also huge in comparison to every other orchard I've been to. So we picked and picked and picked. We were having so much fun and the kids were having a ball. Ainsley was so funny she would find an apple and tell everyone "I found the perfect apple". She's pick it and then 2 minutes later she would say "I found the perfect apple". Needless to say we found a lot of perfect apples. Beckham had fun but once he picked a few bags he had more fun making sure we were following the rules. He was very concerned that we did not go beyond the ropes that said - No picking beyond this point. Any time any of us got close to the line he would make sure we knew not to cross it.

After picking a bunch of bags we head to the front to pay. At this orchard you don't pay per pound you pay per bag. The bags were $3.50 a bag. We figured since they were 3.50 a bag the bags were probably held about 5 pounds of apples. We counted up our bags and we had 10 (well, really 11 but that's another story). We made it back to "His Way Inn" (AKA my parents lake house) and unloaded the apples. As we were taking them out we commented that it looked like a lot of apples. Out of curiosity mom weighed one of the bags and it was 9.8 pounds!! That means we picked over 100 pounds of apples!!! Luckily Uncle Kirk and Aunt Jeannie were in town so we gave some to them, we gave some to my dad's sister, some to a friend, and some to mom's women's Bible Study. After splitting the remaining apples with mom I went home with 39 pounds. There was no way I was going to bring home a single ounce over 40 pounds especially after Monte joked about picking too many and not coming home with a crazy amount of apples like 40 pounds.

Since getting home I've made a huge batch of apple sauce, 2 large apple cakes (I used almost twice as many apples as it called for), apple pie, and of course we have all been eating apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Luckily these are really good apples. They are very juicy and the kids seem to love them. Good thing because they have to eat another 5 pounds each. I love that they are so big because it means less peeling when cooking with them (luckily I have the Pampered Chef apple peeler, corer, slicer) Even though we will be eating apple for the next few weeks we had a great time. We only wished Monte could be there.

I'll post pictures once mom or dad emails me some (hint, hint). I didn't have my camera but they got a bunch of good pics.