Black Mountain and Apple Pickin'

Last weekend we took a quick trip up to Black Mountain to visit with Mama Ree. She hadn't met Layton yet and the kids hadn't seen her since May, so we felt like we needed to go! It was a fun time and we definitely enjoyed being in the mountains where the temperatures were getting close to Fall temps! We took the kids to Montreat to play at the park for a while and then had an awesome dinner at My Father's Pizza.

(side note...Shawn is determined to start shooting weddings with me, so he's been doing some practicing with my camera....all of these shots at the park were taken by him! I'd say he did a pretty darn good job!)








Sunday morning we woke up, had a great breakfast, and headed over to Hendersonville to pick some apples! We decided to go to a new orchard this year, different from the one we went to last year. It was huge and very busy!! It was way more commercialized than the small, more hometown feeling one in Morganton that we visit last year, so I think we'll go back to it for our apple orchard trip next year! But, the kids had a blast and we came home with WAY more apples than we intended!! I made 6 loaves of bread right when we got home to give to the kids' teachers and only went through about 12 of the 75ish apples that we have! I've also made homemade applesauce and an apple pie!

LOVE this family picture....however, the downfall of handing a $2000 camera to a stranger even though I thought I had all the settings right for them, is that they don't realize when it's NOT IN FOCUS! ugh!! Such a pretty view...too bad we are all blurry!

After we did as much picking as we could, we then indulged on more apple products that I thought possible! We had a quick sandwich, and then enjoyed an apple cider slushie, WARM apple cinnamon donuts, a fresh sliced apple with warm carmel dip, and a jug of cold apple cider (basically like fresh "sqeezed" apples!).