Shenandoah Colors

10/16

On Tuesday, we drove up to Shenandoah National Park to see the fall colors.  We also saw a bear!!  We drove along Skyline Drive, starting in Front Royal, got to Matthew's Arm Campground and turned around to head back.  At one point, a car was stopped with its hazard lights on going the other direction.  We couldn't figure out why until we went past and saw the black fuzzy blur in the bushes on our side of the road.  A bear!  We U-turned and tried to spot it again (only half of us saw it) but it has made its way too far away from the road. 

Mystery Baby has a love/hate relationship with the car.  If we can manage to get him to sleep, he sleeps wonderfully.  But most of the time, he just screams.  On this longer trip, we finally got him to sleep and he stayed in the car for the photo ops, hence the photo of him sleeping in his car seat.

New car with its new license plate (and Romney bumper sticker).

We stopped for apple donuts at The Apple House on the way home.

Leaves

This is why we have too many leaves in our tree-less yard.

Pinterest Fall Projects

Thankful Tree idea from here





Leaf Garland idea from here



Pumpkins

We never got around to buying pumpkins last week and were stuck with picking some up Halloween morning.  Note for next year, buy one get one free isn't a super great deal when the pumpkins are huge and 89 cents a pound. 

Fall Road Trip: Day 1

B had a conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA this weekend (10/28-10/30) so the kids and I tagged along to visit with great grandparents and a great aunt and uncle as well as seeing the city B loves. 

The drive was beautiful, I think most of these pictures are in Virginia and West Virginia.  The bottom two pictures on the right are from the same stretch of highway as these first three snow pictures on a different drive.

We got there a couple of hours before B's conference started so he drove us around Pittsburgh before we dropped him off and headed to his grandparents for a quick visit and then to his Aunt G and Uncle D's where we were staying.  We tried to ride on of the inclines with B but didn't have any cash and it required not only cash, but exact change.  The kids and I went back on our own the next day... with exact change.  Little Guy was kept making me clarify.  "You have cash?"  "Yes."  "Exact change?"  "Yes."

Shenandoah National Park 2011

The apple orchard we go to (Stribling) is in Markham, VA which is fairly close to Shenandoah National Park.  Last year we had gone to Shenandoah with B earlier in the week to see if the leaves had changed color yet and our 7 day pass was still good, so after the apples, we headed over to Shenandoah again.  This year, B and I bought a year pass to Shenandoah when we camped there in May so the kids and I drove into Shenandoah and had a picnic.  The leaves hadn't changed too much yet, just a tree here or there.  We saw three deer really close to the car (we stopped on Skyline Drive and rolled down the windows to say hi to them on the side of the road across one skinny lane of traffic). 

deer

Apple Picking 2011

We took some friends (the Js) with us apple picking last year. She emailed me this year to see if we were planning on going again so we had another fun adventure this year. I didn't get nearly as many apples, but still a ton. We didn't see any bears, which I'm always worrying about at the back of my mind. We had fun and now we're munching on yummy apples (which I had to immediately start cutting open with my little car window hammer/knife set since Buddy has so many loose and missing teeth and Little Guy fell out of bed messing around the other night and injured his front teeth and the gums above them).

I love driving in the direction of the apple orchard or Shenandoah because all of a sudden we're in the foothills, and my kids, who spent 4 years in Kansas and now live in a flat part of Virginia, are intrigued by hills, foothills and mountains.  Buddy exclaimed, "What is that?" when we came upon a hill on our drive today.  I don't think he was expecting to run into a hill so suddenly.

Our friend Mom J took this and posted it on her blog.

Shenandoah Leaves: take 2

We went to Shenandoah last week (getting a 7 day pass with our entrance fee of $15) and the leaves were just sort of changing. So after apple picking on Friday, the kids and I headed a little further out, back to the park and saw the leaves a little further on their trip to red. I loved all the blotchy hillsides with reds and yellows and greens and oranges. And I have that Little Guy yelled out, "MOUNTAINS!" when we saw a little hill on the drive out.




We stopped at one of the Visitor's Centers this time to get stamps in our National Parks Passport books. And we took some pictures of the view outside. I had all the kids by a rock. Then Princess Sparkley wanted a picture of just her. Then Buddy wanted a picture of just him, but Little Guy insisted on being on Buddy's rock with him. So Little Guy finally moved to his own rock... which turned out to be a really short one only a couple inches off the ground. It cracked me up.

Apple Picking

One of my Facebook friends mentioned apple picking earlier this week and it got stuck on my mind. So we went to Stribling Orchard in Markham, VA to pick apples Friday (on the way to Shenandoah to use our 7-day pass to see the trees all colorful again). We were lucky enough to be joined by some friends. And the kids totally outdid any past "pick your own" categories I'd placed them in. Before when we've gone apple or blueberry or asparagus picking, they just sort of help and I do most of the picking. This time, I didn't realize how all out they were going with their picking until I got all the bags together to figure out their weight and price. Yikes! We picked almost 30 lbs. of apples. Needless to say, we'll be making A LOT of apple recipes this weekend.

Here are a few I'm going to try out:
Apple Dumplings and Crock Pot Applesauce
Crock Pot Apple Butter or I might make a similar recipe a Facebook friend recommended
Freezing Apple Pie Filling




We looked at their farm animals when we were leaving. And a special trip to see the horse because Little Guy requested that we go see the "Forsey" which is what he now calls horsies unless we correct him.