Apple Orchard 2013

Once again, we made our annual pilgrimage to the apple orchard this fall.  This year we tried a new orchard called Apple Jacks in Delano, MN.  It was about 30 minutes west of Minneapolis so it was a bit of a drive but well worth it!  Our friends Matt and Kelly came with us and brought their daughter, and one of Emma's besties, Kya along.

 The orchard was GREAT!  Some of the hit attractions included:

A cow train.  No, not actual cows.  Rather, it was a bunch of old barrels with seats in them for the kiddies.  All the "cows" had names, Emma's was Sadie.  They seemed to get along great on their journey around the field.

They also had this really cool inflatable jumpy thing that they called a "jumping pillow."  It. Was. Awesome!  I wanted to go on it but I was told that wouldn't be appropriate.  Emma was pretty pumped at first and charged right up on the jumpy thing only to get bounced off when some bigger kids came bounding along.  Then she didn't think it was so cool.  But after some hand holding and peer pressure from Kya, she was all about bouncing around.

Then of course there were the apples.  It took us a while to convince Emma that the apples on the tree were a lot better than the apples that were on the ground.  She eventually got the concept and was a big helper!

Once we got our apple home, we got right to work making some yummy apple sauce and Melissa whipped up some even yummier apple crisp.  First we had to peel and core the apples, which is quite a job unless you have this handy little tool, and little handy Emma, to help out.

Looking forward to our visit to the orchard next year.  Chances are we'll be heading back to Apple Jack's.

With love from Minneapolis,
Jason, Melissa, and Emmsa