It's Fall in Michigan

I have a love/hate relationship with Fall. I absolutely love the four or five days of color, the cider, donuts, pies, and candles. Pretty much everything else is a bummer. The gray, the cold, the raking, and cleaning out gutters all seem to persist much longer than the benefits. An appropriately balanced blog post would show probably 30% photos from the first category 70% from the latter. But that sure seems like a waste of free online storage space. Plus, I don't take that many pictures of blah stuff. So here is just the good stuff - and consider yourself duly informed that life is only about 30% as pretty as depicted herein.

I am pretty confident my kids enjoy the raking far more than we do. And the truth is, I enjoy it more when they are enjoying it.


But one can only work on the yard for so long. Then it's time to head out. There is an apple orchard in Freeland - Lehman's - that has a neat outdoor play area. It looks like they used common farm items to make a playground. There is a neat petting zoo on the side as well. We usually go to Bayne's but this year why not mix it up a little?

We really had fun that day. We also went back to Grandma's Pumpkin Patch. I don't know if it's becoming a tradition or what but this is the second year in a row where we met the DeRuyter's there on a Sunday afternoon in October. This place is cute too, perhaps busier and pricier, but still fun. While Alyssa was climbing on the tractors...


...Evan was riding in the cow train.


Here is the only photo I have that proves the DeRuyter's were there:

This photo cracks me up. Evan wasn't quite prepared for the raw speed this innocent-looking slide offered. I think I broke his fall with my right foot about 1/10 of a second after I snapped this photo:
There is this indoor watering trough (empty) with about a dozen baby chicks peeping around. The kids love to visit this every year but it's so hard for me to get good photos of it.

If you scroll waaaay back in time you will find a blog post last year of me and Evan standing in front of the fire pit. Here is the 2010 edition of the same photo:


Well that's all. Sign us off, MB!

-Chris