Tractors! Oh, and apples too.

This was a classic early fall weekend so we took another trip out to the apple orchard. The stated reasons were these, and not particularly in this order: So we could pick apples; so I could get apple donuts; and so Elise could see the tractors and enjoy a hay ride.

All she talked about before we arrived was how she would ride the tractor. Of course, stopping to pick apples turned out to be a nice perk along the way.

Taking a break by sitting on a large pumpkin. Love those sneaks.

The pursuit...

... and the grab.

Anni's a self-admitted fruit snob who can often be seen inspecting a piece of fruit for the smallest blemish, so it must pain her to see a photo of herself unknowingly holding a slightly bruised apple as though she just plucked a gold nugget. Heh.

The first step in making applesauce.

She just couldn't bring herself to look at the camera.

The lady likes snacking while on a hay ride.

Surprise! Colin's sleeping -- again.

Stop and smell...

With Anni's maternity leave drawing toward an end, I bailed from work one day last week and we planned to take the brood for some outdoor activities. The weather was cold and crummy and we were kind of pinched for time, so we headed over to Como Zoo and Conservatory for a while before doing pizza for lunch.

This was how Colin spent most of the morning...

 

...except when Anni had him trying to smell the roses.

I'm not sure what this was about.

 

Makin' a break for it.

Anni would have been in this picture too, but she didn't like my idea of asking someone else to take the picture -- mostly because the only other person around was a mom with two kids younger than ours. Burden shmurden, next time I'm asking.

The get along gang

Six weeks into this new arrangement Elise and Colin are handling each other quite well. That's mostly because Elise is great with him and he doesn't mind a toddler's open-mouth kisses and high-pitched squeals at close range.
We've yet to say, "Elise, don't step on Colin." Instead, we have to say, "Elise, give him some space." I suppose that's a good problem to have.

Lady being lady

You find a few gems when you're sweeping up the cutting room floor.

Somebody thought it was pretty cool when we had a lazy weekend breakfast on the back porch instead of at the dining table. Yeah, we try hard to impress.

This mechanical horse may have a name, but it's known as the Hooley's horse. It sits outside a restaurant on Main Street in downtown Stillwater, but its history is as deep as its paint is faded. This thing for years -- decades, probably -- was parked at the entrance to Hooley's, a ma-and-pa grocery store in Stillwater. I remember riding on it when I was a kid. A ride was a penny then. Now, Elise needs two shiny quarters to kickstart that ol' steed. She often hitches a ride when she's in town for a visit to the coffeeshop.

 Elise, a flood-swollen river and the Stillwater Lift Bridge.

At the start of Anni's maternity leave, we went on a picnic to the nearby school and playground. Elise likes swings. It was the first time in a long time that I'd been on a swing -- and it kind of shows. More fascinating, though, was the countless cubic yards of shredded mulch they spread instead of sand or wood chips. Odd.

This is also where a little girl we know peed on a tree, but that's a different story.

Scrub

Here are a couple of shots from Colin's first "bath," which Anni and Elise gave him about five days after he was born. It was one of the many times we've looked at him and thought how much he looks like Elise when she was an infant. For his first month, he basically was the boy version of her.

 This last picture is of Elise when she was about two weeks old. They're definitely related.

Apples with the Big Apple duo

Fall officially is not upon us yet, but we ushered it in unofficially over the weekend by heading out to the Afton Apple Orchard, where Anni once proudly punched a timecard and we now visit a few times a year.

We had some new pickers on this outing. Friends Petra and Lee were in town from New York. (Apparently orchards aren't in abundance in Manhattan.)
It's still early in the season so only Paula Reds were ripe to be picked, but the experience only is partly about picking apples. There are few better ways to enjoy these autumn days than at the orchard.

We had a good time picking apples and raspberries, and now we're tuned up for the big event this fall: the fifth-annual Wente-Singel orchard trip. 

All's fair in family day at the fair

Anytime I go to the Minnesota State Fair, I make sure upon entering the fair gates to get a good look at the people leaving the fairgrounds. They're clammy, bloated from deep-fried batter and fresh malts, tired, dragging their feet and all but guaranteed to be pushing a stroller packed with schlocky trinkets or oversized purple stuffed animals and either a sleeping child or a wailing child that hit meltdown stage somewhere between the sheep barn and the midway.
It never fails; there always is one of those families wandering out of the fair gates.
This year I thought that might be us.
Colin was three weeks old last week, which meant it was the perfect time to take him and a toddler to their first state fair, that massive cauldron of pronto pups, charred meat on a stick and sweaty, pasty humanity.
We decided to make it a family trip, knowing full well it could end in complete disaster, with a screaming newborn who needed to be fed while we peeled a tantruming toddler off the sidewalk.
It ended up to be a surprisingly enjoyable outing, which proved once again that if you plan for the worst, it might end up being not the worst time you've ever had.
We started early, which might have been our smartest decision of the day. You hit the fair early when the crowds are easier for a toddler to navigate and the mini-donut oil is still fresh.
Elise had a good time and was a phenomenal toddler. We were there over four hours and she walked at least half of the time. Slowly and, at times, seemingly without purpose, but she hoofed it up and down Dan Patch and Judson like it was no big deal.
One of Elise's highlights was the main attraction in the horticulture building. Leave it to the suburban gardeners' kid to be enthralled not with the children's amusement park but with the display of prize-winning fruits and vegetables. She was so excited that she just walked right under the guard ropes and nearly picked up somebody's first-place green beans. And she got up close and personal with the giant pumpkins, in one case almost removing the blue ribbon stuck to the side. The girl digs her garden produce. (True story: After donuts, strawberries and cream, a pronto pup and some root beer, she wanted to sit in the stroller and eat the container of peas that Anni had packed from home as a just-in-case snack.)
Colin, well, he didn't see much at the fair. He mostly slept, alternating between the stroller and the carrier that Anni uses. We nearly were a fair attraction ourselves, as people continuously walked by and quietly nudged fellow fairgoers to point out the tiny baby that Anni had in the sling.
We did not make it to the all-you-can-drink milk booth this year, but Colin did. In fact, in an apropos episode, Anni fed Colin while sitting right outside the Miracle of Life barn, where you can watch farm animals give birth and feed their offspring.
After more than four hours of the fair, we decided it was time to head home when we looked down to see Elise zonked out in the stroller with a piece of fresh string cheese hanging from her lips. She had fallen asleep mid-chew.
Thankfully, we left the fairgrounds content, not exhausted and disheveled.

The morning started at the "little farmhands" exhibit, where kids can pretend to work the farm, from riding tractors to feeding (fake) chickens.

Then it was on to the real tractors at Machinery Hill, or at least the one remaining tractor dealer at the corner of the fairgrounds that used to feature a plethora of farm implements.

My parents have a picture of Bryan and I sitting in a tractor wheel when we were probably 3 and 5. This was an attempt to recreate that. We'll try again in a couple of years when Elise has a little brother to share the wheel with.

 

This is a shot of Colin's exciting day at the fair.

 

The women and the wheels.

We wanted to attempt to take Elise on the Giant Slide, but did not know whether she would embrace the ride or run the other way. (Remember, we ruined the carousel experience a few weeks ago by trying to take a tired toddler on a loud zoo carousel.) We barely arrived at the bottom of the slide and Elise was trying to run to the entrance. I took her down the slide twice; she had a ball.

Another shot of a newborn who couldn't contain his enthusiasm.

We ate a cup of the classic fair French fries while sitting outside the Horticulture building.

Elise sucks the honey stick dry. 

And...let's call it a day.