Farewell by impalement...

Our house smells like fall! I've decided my very favorite thing about summer ending is that fall comes right after it. I'll always be a sun baby, but every year I feel like autumn becomes more and more enjoyable. In fact, I think I would even go so far this year as to say it's my favorite season. The adorable sweaters get to come out of the closet, cute jackets and tights, incredible orange and red leaves falling all around you, stews, and the fragrances of pumpkin spice, cloves, hot apples, and cinnamon. Nothing beats it. Being that it's September 1st and all, we had our first fall adventure this afternoon and it got me so in the mood. We got home, made some dinner, harvested another thousand cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from our garden, visited J and A, then headed out to a park on the edge of town boasting five or six apple trees free for the picking. We got out our bags, Isaac climbed the nearest tree, and off we went collecting our bounty. There were tons - golden delicious, red delicious, and whatever the kind is that's in the middle that are both reddish and greenish. We filled a paper bag to the brim with the first two trees and then ran around to each of the others marveling at their beauty. One bag was enough for our purposes, so we frolicked a little more and then headed home and made our first batch of ginger cinnamon applesauce! I've never made applesauce before and was amazed at how simple it is...and it makes it even better since our apples were all free. The house smelled incredible and the applesauce tasted perfect. Happy fall to us.

Oh, the other fall-tastic news is that Isaac's friend from work brought his food dryer to work today to let us borrow for a couple months so we can dry the heck out of as much fruit as we can get our hands on. Last weekend Isaac set his trusty hands to making us a homemade food dryer (did I tell you this already? I can't remember) out of cardboard and foil. And it worked great, except for the fact that it's a slight fire hazard being that it's made completely out of cardboard, so we could never have it on unless we were in the house. Not too much of a hardship, except that food takes like six hours to dry, so that left using up the six hours between work and bedtime to dry food without ever leaving the house. It just wasn't that ideal, but it was pretty fun that it worked. This one's way better though, because it lets us have it on all day and all night long. We'll be drying more apples than we care to count and we've got access to a pear tree and five plum trees, one of which is right outside our front door. We're like little squirrels storing up their food for the winter. It'll be great, though, because dried fruit is a perfect snack and this way, all this great fruit won't go to waste if it doesn't get eaten in the next couple weeks. Plus, the dryer adds to the fall aromas in our house, bringing lots of joy to my heart.

Speaking of joy to my heart, here's something that does not bring joy to my heart - Morgan and Tommy left for Europe this morning...for seven whole months. Fun for them, but their dear friends in America are going to miss them. Their send-off on Sunday consisted of a couple hours spent at a fantastic rope swing out on the lake. The boys had the time of their lives while the girls spent their time trying to ignore the fact that there were monstrous sticks all around the swinging path just waiting to impale one of their husbands. In one of the jumps I thought for sure Tommy was going to get stuck by one straight through the heart, but he dropped his feet into the water just in time to slow his swing enough to avoid it. I swear I didn't stop shaking for a full ten minutes. Sounds like the perfect way to send Morgs and Tommy off, huh? It really was, the boys had a blast. Here's Tommy right before we all said goodbye. See you in April, dear friends!