apples and cabins and cows, oh my!

We had a wonderful weekend adventure with some of our favorite friends this weekend...so fun that it inspired me to blog, which is really saying something these days! You may recall that a few years ago Matt and I went to Mexico with our friends Adam and Jessie. It was glorious and relaxing and rejuvenating and people waited on us hand and foot and all we had to do was decide what angle to lay in the sun and what combination of blended alcohol and fruit to imbibe. Glorious. Well, this weekend was really similar because it was still me and Matt and Jessie and Adam...but also our five children (between the ages of 1-6), and instead of a luxury resort in Mexico, we went to a...ummm...rustic might be too generous...cabin in north Georgia. A cabin with two bedrooms and one bathroom. And there were no attentive staff waiting on us hand and foot...it was more like endless children crawling underfoot and demanding things. But otherwise is was basically exactly the same.

HAHAHA no it wasn't. But it was its own kind of wonderful, I promise.

Our primary goal was to go apple picking. Matt and I have never been, so obviously Millie hasn't either, and it was high time to cross that off our bucket list!! Millie, as expected, was REALLY EXCITED about the whole thing. 

Actually, she was really confused about why we were pooping on her eating-apples-off-the-ground party, but she caught on eventually. We had a lot of fun picking (and eating) apples, although I must admit that it was a much stinkier project than I'd imagined. Who woulda thought that thousands of apples rotting in the Georgia heat (the apples on the ground) (yes, it's still in the 80s here, even in the foothills of the mountains...gah...) could create such a delightful smell? Phew! Anyway, it was great even with that.

The apple orchard had the whole fall farm festival thing going on, so there were all kinds of other fun things to entertain the kids (and adults, let's be honest) for the rest of the day. We ate loads of fried garbage and drank tasty apple cider slushies...I hear people who live in places that get actual fall weather drink something called "hot cider," but cider slushies are way more my jam when I'm sweating buckets waiting in line for the ponies!

Millie had loads of fun doing anything that involved touching animals. That baby cow in the top right picture was her SOUL MATE. I swear they were communicating in a secret language or something and plotting to run off together. It was precious. My little cow whisperer. But then again, her expression while cuddling the kitten was basically perfection. True love.

On our way back home on Sunday, we stopped in an adorable small town (Ball Ground, GA, anyone?) and ate some incredibly tasty German food and played in a lovely (and very Stars Hollow-esque) gazebo- or "my house," as Millie quickly named-and-claimed it. 

Trying to wrangle the kids to stay still for pictures was nearly impossible, but the chaos nicely captured the essence of the weekend, haha. It wasn't exactly relaxing, but it was an awful lot of fun...which I also think sums up parenthood pretty nicely! Now we have a few weeks to recover and detox from apple-themed, sugar-filled fried everything...because we head back to the mountains with our family for another weekend soon! Yaaaaay for fall and fun, and we'll pray many prayers that the weather will cool the heck off so that we aren't forced to continue our summer wardrobes well into November. UGH. (We may LOOK semi-fallish in these pictures, but trust me, we were all sweating to death because the mamas were overly optimistic about "mountain weather" when packing...)