i came out blogging: picking apples, red and green

opening day for picking honey crisp apples at erwin's orchards was today, which was also hayden's first day of first grade. so, unfortunately, hayden wasn't able to join us this year.
after waving goodbye to hayden on the bus, mom, dad, jenn, rainah, talan and myself all headed to south lyon to pick some apples and get some donuts!
honey crisp apples have become a really popular apple. a couple of years ago we showed up and they told us they were close to being all picked...and they had only been open for a few hours!!! this year we got there around 10 (they open at 9) since we had to see hayden off to school but there were still plenty to pick. however, this year they decided to rip everybody off since they are such a popular apple. if we were going to pick a bushel of any other apple we would have paid $28 ($26 with a coupon). but since i was picking honey crisp apples they charged me $40 and i wasn't even able to use the coupon!! but boy, are those honey crisp apples good!!!
we paid for our apples and hopped on the tractor to go pick our apples. i brought the stroller thinking talan would be running all over the place, but he actually did really well staying around us. i think rainah is a good influence on him! he wasn't the best apple picker helper, but he did pick a few that he could eat. and instead of taking one bite out of every apple in the orchard the way hayden did several years back, he actually ate the apple down to the core.
after we picked out honey crisps, we headed to the cars to drop them off. then we headed back out on the tractor to go and pick some empire apples. after dropping those off at the cars, we then let talan and rainah play on the bikes and in the hay maze before we went to get our donuts. talan didn't want to stop riding on the bikes even though they were way too big for him, but with a promise of a donut he eventually caved.
the bees surrounded us the second we walked outside with our donuts so we tried to get the kids to eat them quickly as we were walking to the car. talan took maybe 3 bites of his but somehow ended up COVERED in sugar. i honestly have no idea how he did it as it looked like he had more sugar on him then the donut ever had on it.
we headed home and tried (and failed) to get the kids to eat some lunch and then we just hung out and helped peel some apples for our apple pancake dinner later that evening.
i headed home at about 3:45 so i could get hayden from the bus and bring him back over to mom and dad's where dave also joined us after work.
it was a long, exhausting but fun day and the pancakes were delicious!! hayden was bummed that he wasn't able to go but i promised him we would go another time. we have SO many apples though, so now i'm thinking maybe one day i'll take him raspberry picking with me!
and i think next year i'll be looking into other orchard's and seeing if they rip you off on the honey crisps as well. if they do, i'll still buy them, but don't tell them that.

rainah, mom, talan and jenn on the way to the honey crisps: