Happy Halloween!

Here are our costumes.  In case you can’t tell, we are characters from Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat.  Susanna, obviously, is the cat and Scott and I are Thing 1 and Thing 2.  We taught Susanna how to hold up a cup and some milk and a cake, to hold up three books and a fish on a rake.  But we had a hard time getting her tail to hold a red fan—let alone to fan with the fan. (All the while, of course, she was hopping on the ball).  Honestly, though all that might have helped people guess Susanna’s costume: she never kept her hat on very long and the hat without the hat is, well, just a cat.

 

Look closely at the photograph on the above left and you’ll see that Susanna is holding her tail.  She wanted to be just like the Cat in the Hat (even though she would not put her bow-tie on).

Below Susanna is helping me make a pumpkin pie (she actually did very little except “snitch” some of the pie crust, but the apron is cute so you get some pictures anyway).  I thought it would be a fun thing to do on Halloween, but it turns out that the last thing people want to eat after a full day of candy is a slice of pumpkin pie.  I had one anyway.

And this last photograph is Susanna with her three cute cousins who live less than thirty minutes away, and with whom we spend basically all day on Halloween.  Thanks, guys, for letting us tag-along all day.

Distant Apple Orchards

Susanna and I visited an apple orchard just outside Sedro Woolley—a small town on the North Cascades Highway that is about an hour and a half away.  Well, we actually visited two.  After driving the long hour and a half, I helped a frustrated and fidgety Susanna out of her car seat, got her boots and jacket on, made sure I had everything I needed (wipes, our water bottles, a snack, etc), and then headed out to pick apples.  It turns out that the only part of orchard #1 that was open to the public was the store, so after all that hullaballoo (including the long drive) we simply bought a large box of jonagolds and found ourselves done with our outing.  What I am trying to say is that It was a bit anticlimactic.

Luckily, this is not where the story ends.  The nice lady who sold us the apples told me about a farm down the road that had a u-pick orchard so we drove the extra five miles for the farm experience.  It was a beautiful day and, except for the eerie music and witch cackles that occasionally wafted over from the haunted greenhouse, we felt like we had the farm to ourselves.  The lady at this farm was also very nice and she encouraged us to wander as much and as long as we liked and to eat as many apples as we could.  So we munched and wandered and picked a few apples.  It worked out just fine to go to both orchards: the apples at the first were less than half the price of those at the second, and having already gotten our tons of apples, we could roam around the second orchard without the pressure of having to do anything.

Here are some photographs.