Taste of Fall

We were blessed with a beautiful early Fall weekend....

Elijah poses with the 2 perfect pumpkins we harvested from our garden:

On Saturday, we headed off to South Hero to go apple picking. Elijah fell asleep in the car, so we decided to kill some time and drive around a bit. We landed here:

Yup...A fish hatchery. Neither Ed nor I had even been to one, so we decided to check it out. We were pleasantly surprised, to say the least! There was the small aquarium:

Some pretend fishing:

And bins and bins of fish fry-- just waiting to be released into the wild. Feeding them pellets out of the 25-cent machine was fun! They went wild, jumping up out of the water to try to get some food!

We took some time to enjoy the beautiful viewing pond before heading off for the orchard.

Ed and Elijah on our tractor ride out to the orchard:

We picked 32 pounds (!) of Macs, Cortlands and Vermont Golds.

I guess we went a little overboard...but it was a perfect day for picking apples!

Yesterday, Elijah and Ed harvested our winter squash- we were so thrilled with our squash bounty this year. We baked up some buttercup squash for dinner last night, and it was absolutely delicious!!!

Maine: A Trip I Never Regret!

In an effort to extend our summer, Elijah and I decided to take one final trip to Maine during Labor Day weekend. Keeping an eye on Hurricane Earl and hoping that it's track was incorrectly predicted (it was), we finally just decided to "go for it," and headed off on Friday afternoon.

Before even arriving at the cottage, we already had baked stuffed lobster on board from our new favorite restaurant, Bay Haven Lobster Pound. Once we got to the cottage and opened up all the windows (it was nearly 90 degrees that afternoon), we headed straight down to the beach to eat our lobster and swim until dusk. It was a strange evening, as I have never stayed at the cottage without another adult! But thankfully, being Labor day weekend, there was tons of activity on the peninsula. We never felt alone!

The next morning, my Mom, Paula (sister), Aunt Nancy and niece Isabella all arrived between 10 and noon. We had such a great time, hanging by the beach, eating lobster, visiting, and (of course) playing choo-choo trains.

Sunday was a bit more blustery. That morning, my Mom, Elijah and I went apple picking and blueberry picking (the beginning of one season and the end of the other at Libby's U-Pick). What a funny combination, but the blueberries (and blueberry donuts) made for a nice late-summer snack and the crisp, early apples were delicious in the pies I made the next week. What I wouldn't do for a slice of one of those pies right now!

Back on the home front, my two favorite boys:And the world's most accident-prone dog...relegated to wearing a t-shirt so she won't rip out the stitches she needed after tangling with something (barbed wire fencing?) in our woods. Doesn't she look a little embarrassed?

Drowning in School....

More blog posts to come...I promise.
School (and all of its responsibilities) wacked me HARD upside the head. After such an amazing summer, I was completely blindsided. I forgot how much work school is. Oh yeah, now I remember.....................................
Elijah and I DID go to Maine labor Day weekend and had the most amazing time. Pictures to follow, if I ever come up for air, haha.