a mid-day off

As you probably know, New England is famous for its autumn...and with good reason (although, I must tell you that Northern Virginia's fall is pretty darn awesome, too). Well, we are close to the height of the season, and the leaves are just stunning. Hopefully we'll go out sometime soon and scope out some great landscapes.

Yesterday we took the kids on another fun fall adventure. They had the day off in observance of Rosh Hashanah, so Ted took the day off and we drove north to Parlee Farms where we headed out to their apple orchards and picked apples, rummaged around their pumpkins for some overpriced farm pumpkins, and strolled down the raspberry bushes for some fresh raspberries. The best part is the apple cider donuts, though, that you can buy hot and fresh there. Yum, yum, yum.

We came home with 20 pounds of apples (we selected Jonagolds) and made two apple pies last night. So good. It was missing the a la mode part, though. Must go buy some ice cream tomorrow!!

We also came home with 2 quarts of raspberries that I was planning to make jam with. I say was because sadly we left them on the counter last night, and apparently fresh raspberries must be refrigerated, because they looked awful this morning. How disappointing. They were good at the farm at least, and I picked out a few this morning for my cereal.