Apple-Picking Expedition

Saturday was a beautiful fall day, cool and crisp and sunny, so we took the boys to pick some apples at Appleberry Farm. It was a little late in the season for apple picking so we struggled a bit to find edible apples, but it was such a nice day to be outdoors. And the apples we did find have been excellent. Darby picked up one runty, deformed-looking apple from the ground, and it didn't have any bruises or holes, so I let him try it. We all ended up sampling that apple, and it was just about the most glorious specimen of an apple any of us had ever tasted. Hopefully the rest of our finds will live up to that first apple. We also quite enjoyed our lunch of cider brats with apple-onion relish, apple donuts, and apple cider.

Look closely at those leaves. There's a Casey in there somewhere.

Since most of the easy-to-reach apples were gone, Chris hoisted Casey and Darby up in the air to try to get at some higher branches. They didn't have much luck, though. Height-wise, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree in this family. (Ooo, that was bad, but I couldn't help it.)

This was when I made Darby carry the bags of apples. Kid has to start pulling his own weight sometime!

Casey posed himself with these pumpkins, put on his fakest photo smile, and asked me to take his picture.

We weren't ready to pick out pumpkins this weekend, but the boys couldn't help but browse.

On our way out we found a great weeping willow tree to climb around in.

Work and Play at the House

We've spent quite a bit of time at the house the past few weeks cleaning and painting. Finally we're starting to see it all pay off. It smells like fresh paint and new carpet instead of wet dog and cigarette smoke.

Here's the living room with new carpet and new curtains (and a lot of space for the boys to run around). We don't have much furniture to put up here yet, so for a while it's going to be the room where we play soccer and have dance parties.


Casey took this sweet photo of Chris and Darby.


Casey thinks the fireplace is a great place to play cars (not when it's on). It's gas-powered, so we can just flip a switch and have a nice fire. Casey's very cautious around anything we tell him is hot, so really we just have to worry about Darby getting too close.


We put Darby to work cleaning the kitchen. I'll probably re-sweep that floor later.


All that sweeping was hard work, I guess. Time for a break. (Hey, you can see the old carpet in this photo--heavily-stained grayish berber. Yuck.)



The boys enjoy a snack.


Back at the apartment, we're making sure to pack all the important stuff, boys and cats included.

Halloween at the Zoo

The zoo had a special trick-or-treating event on Sunday, so we put the kids in their costumes and headed over. The line for the trick-or-treating was ridiculously long, so we skipped that. Casey didn't know the difference. He was just enjoying wearing his costume, seeing the other kids in their costumes, and just being at the zoo, his absolute favorite place in the world.

Casey is a monkey this year. I had some vague aspirations toward making homemade costumes, but in the end I just got him this off Craig's List. I don't even know where my sewing machine is packed. And every day, it seemed like Casey was telling me he wanted to be something different. Batman. Ghost. Lion. I heard giraffe quite a few times.

He never mentioned monkey, but I thought the monkey costume was cute and that I could talk him into it. Unfortunately the conversation went something like this:

"Casey, do you want to be a monkey?"

"No, I want to be a giraffe!"

"Hmmm ... I don't think I can get a giraffe costume. Wouldn't it be cool to be a monkey?"

"Oh ... ok ... I want to be a hippo!"

Seriously, how do you make a kid look like a hippo? Luckily, ever since we acquired the monkey costume, he has been very excited about it. I am still a little ashamed that I didn't try to come up with a giraffe costume, though. Maybe next year.

Isn't he cute? When he was first modeling it, he turned around and made me take a photo of his tail too. But I'm not going to post that.

This was a popular costume. We saw quite a few just like it at the zoo. One of the best costumes we saw was a guy dressed as the Man in the Yellow Hat (his kids were Curious George and a baby banana). And, we ate lunch at the same table as a family of penguins. That was a little odd, actually. They kept trying to make polite conversation, but I just couldn't take them seriously.

Darby's wearing the pumpkin costume that has been handed down to us from the cousins. He doesn't resemble a hobbit in the same way Casey did at this age, so we won't be reusing the Frodo costume I made. (Unless ... could he pass for Samwise Gangee?? I don't know ...)

One of the best moments of the day was when these three macaws knocked this pumpkin off the branch. They all looked down at the shattered remnants in stunned silence for a moment, then simultaneously started squawking at each other in this very accusatory way. Like, "I can't believe you just did that!" "ME?! You were the one shoving your beak in there!" "Now what are we going to peck at?" You kind of had to be there, but it was hilarious.

Fun at the playground ...

Darby intently watches the giraffes. (Giraffes plural! Two additional giraffes are staying in Wisconsin for the winter.)

Stay tuned in the next few days for "Darby: The Year in Review."