The Leaves are Falling...

It is Autumn!  And the leaves are falling.  So I guess we better rake them.

 
Last year due to us getting married and many, many feet of snow (unusual for Virginia), we didn't get around to raking leaves until March.  And then it took us until May to finish raking.  We have a decent sized yard, but more so we have pine needles that fall all year long along with a few Maple trees, a Sycamore Gum, and an Oak tree which drop beautiful, colorful leaves. 

So this year we had a little help...

Look at how much fun Elaina is having!  Thanks to everyone's help, we were able to rake our entire yard in an hour and a half!  That is amazing!  It would have taken Isaac and I three months.  We got 43 bags of leaves!  That's crazy.

There were still a few trees who haven't dropped their leaves yet.  Actually, as we were a few bags away from finishing the back yard, a gust of wind came along and blew some of the leaves off the trees, right onto our freshly raked yard.  Everyone exclaimed, "Noooo!"  So in  a couple weeks Isaac and I will rake another 20 bags or so to finish up when the last trees.  We usually get around 60 or so bags each season.  That is some kind of crazy!  But is was wonderful to have the help.  The rest of the leaves will be pretty easy because it shouldn't include so much of that pesky pine!

The missionaries had lots of fun!  We love the missionaries!

And of course after all of our hard work, we had to eat some chilli and gingerbread cookies.  It was supposed to be a chilly day so we thought it would be nice to eat chilli and have hot cocoa and cookies when we were finished raking, but it was a beautiful, warm day.  So much for the hot cocoa.  Maybe next time.  But the cookies were good.  And a couple of them baked together like something you would see at the circus.

Thanks everyone!

Homemade Marshmallows and Rice Crispy Treats

Many of you know corn and I do not get along.  And since America is built on corn, we have to look at every ingredient in everything we buy to make sure there is not any corn or corn by product in it.  Talk about a headache.  It takes forever to go grocery shopping.  We are getting better at it though and have been able to find many of the foods we love, without corn products.  Perhaps our waistlines would do better if we hadn't found a really good alternative to Nabisco's Oreos, but Back to Nature sure is good.

Anyway, I really love rice crispy treats, but marshmallows...well...pretty much all corn syrup.  So my dear husband decided we would make our own.  So we did.  And they turned out terrific! 

We have to get the rice crispies at Trader Joe's since the kind you can buy at a regular grocery store are made with corn syrup.  Oh I'm loving Trader Joe's.  All natural ingredients, and the prices are great!

I'm starting to think Isaac really doesn't like it when I take his photograph.  Or is it that I had to make sure I got the marshmallow he had all over his face.

As an aside...
We got new phones and I have been trying my hand at using the camera.  It's not bad.  I however...am not that good.  I usually cut off our faces and get just our eyes... or just our mouths.

 
They turned out delicious!

Picking Apples!

A few weeks ago we went apple picking with a few friends of ours.  I really enjoy Virginia because you can pick strawberries in the spring, apples and pumpkins in the fall, and get pretty good produce from the farms during the year.  Mmmm.  I love good produce.

Isaac and I really love Fuji and Jazz apples.  Deliciously crisp and sweet.  So we waited until late October when the Fujis were ready to be picked. Carter Mountain doesn't grow Jazz, so we picked lots of Fujis.  Last year when we went apple picking it was pretty chilly and foggy.  It made for some good photographs, but cold pickers.  This year was a lovely, warm fall day.  The weather has been unusually warm this year.  But we made a fun day of it anyway. 

Jessica, you are adorable!

 
So, as a photographer, I like to create nice images of people and places.  Isaac is very good at helping me achieve that.

Well, it looks like he had fun at least.

As we were walking through the groves of trees we saw this interesting site.  Wonder what happened to all the leaves.  At least the apples were still intact.

We had a wonderful time.  We picked about 20 pounds of apples.  Now its time to make lots of yummy applesauce.