It's Fall!!

I'm sure everyone had it marked on their calendars and took note, but Saturday was the first day of autumn!  It's my FAVORITE season!  I was outside brushing Abby and as the breeze blew (and whirled all the dog hair around) it had a different smell to it than it did in the summer.  It smelled like FALL.  Have you seen the trees!?!  There's one on my street and a few more I've seen around town that are starting to turn.  That's the sign that it's REALLY here.

I love fall because my mother has conditioned me since I was a small child, but also because there's so much fun stuff to do in the fall.  We always go to an apple orchard, to a pumpkin farm and try to squeeze in as many Halloween activities as we can.  I usually try to do the apple orchard in September so I have 4 weekends in October to focus on Halloween activities.



When I first decided to do the apple orchard visit, Caden was still little and Ellie was a baby.  I didn't know of an orchard, but living in NE Ohio, I knew that there had to be one close.  I found a site, pickyourown.org, that (shocker) lists all the farms that allow you to pick our own fruit and veggies.  I found a few orchards that actually aren't pick your own, but there's still local orchards.  The first few years we went to Beckwith Orchards in Kent, OH which isn't a pick your own, but you can walk around the orchard.  They have a great store where you can buy really good cider and apples by the bag, plus lots of other goodies.  There's also a decent corn maze for the kids.  It's big enough to be a challenge, but not so big that you get lost.  Although we really liked it there, it WAS a 45 minute drive for us so I decided to look for somewhere closer.  A friend of mine (thanks Jamie!) suggested that we try Dunlap's Orchard in Green, OH.  It's a pick your own place and took about 15 minutes to get there-much better!  The kids were older then and had a good time climbing the trees to get the apples.  Since it's a smaller-scale operation they didn't have as many apples to buy prepackages and my kids weren't the best about picking good apples. (Many were from the ground, too small, wormy...)

This year I'm going to try yet ANOTHER orchard.  It's Arrowhead Orchard in Paris, OH.  Ellie went there with her preschool class last year for a field trip.  The school was a little disappointed that they were getting away from the apple orchard part of it and branching out to more pumpkins and hay rides...which to me sounds like a great family outing, but I agree, not the best for a school trip to learn about apples.  So this year we're going to give it a try.  I'll let you know how it goes.  I'm sure Olivia will really be into it!