In Which I Turn a Trip to the Apple Orchard into a Hostage Situation

And not just a regular hostage situation, but one that required my partner changing clothes TWICE beforehand, because he kept walking out of the bathroom wearing something stupid.

Sir, this is the first time I've had all four of us together in a picturesque location since June, and we likely won't all be looking this cute together in a cute spot until January. You are not wearing trackie bottoms OR your Voltron T-shirt in my good photos!

And so, everyone looking cute as buttons, off we went to the same place we've gone every autumn since these kids were actual genuine kids:

As always, we drove straight into the middle of the orchard and then dove headfirst into the middle of all the apples we could get our hands on:

The little kid has two months left on her braces, so she was less this--

--or this--

--and more this:

The big kid, though, basically spent the entire trip doing a shot-by-shot remake of this:

I wore my brand new witch hat that I sewed from a vintage quilt top, and good thing, too, because requiring someone else to take the camera to take some photos of me in it made sure that there was genuine photographic evidence that I was on this trip, too!

To be fair, though, the actual real star of the apple orchard show was Luna. We spent the entire afternoon at the orchard, but nevertheless, when I got home and saw that I'd taken over 500 photos in the span of approximately four hours, I was pretty embarrassed and was like, "Yikes! I am doing TOO MUCH! My poor family, how I have tortured them by forcing them to pose for 500 photos!" However, when I started editing the photos I realized that at least 450 of them were of the dog, and then I was all, "Oh! That's totally fine!" Because obviously when I'm taking photos of Luna, I have to take 1,000 shots at a time to try to get one where she's looking at me, and when I'm taking a group portrait that she's part of, everyone else has to continue to look pleasant and hold their pose (hence the hostage situation...) while I take those 1,000 shots.

But it's so worth it, because look how pretty and joyful she is!

And then another 1,000 photos of her looking sweet but NOT at the camera--

--and you see how it can quickly get out of hand.

We were never all in the same place at the same time last autumn, much less at the apple orchard, but the previous two or three years when we've gone, there had been a series of bad apple harvests and therefore not many apples left on the trees.

But not this year!

I was going for the Twilight vibe, and if I'd taken the photo in portrait instead of landscape, I'd have cracked it!

I don't know if you can tell, but Luna's favorite treat is apple, a fact that we discovered at this very orchard!

Having a kid with braces brings a new dimension to our constant apple noshing, because we get the opportunity to see how pretty all the apples are on the inside!

My other favorite thing about this orchard is that it's on the flight path to the local airport. Vaguely wondering what airplane it was that just passed by low overhead? Don't worry, because I'll tell you, and then I'll try to make you look at a zoomed in photo of it on my camera!

This one is from FedEx!

This, though, is my ACTUAL favorite thing about the orchard:

Combined with picking out pumpkins to carve--

--fighting the bees for our fair share of apple cider slushes, elephant ears, and apple dumplings--

--petting every llama in the petting zoo, and buying a gallon of apple cider and a pumpkin roll in the apple barn, it's almost enough magical family memories to see me through until Winter Break.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!