Applesauce... and taking a break from it

We've been busy making and canning applesauce here.  It's been such a beautiful fall for apples!  We ran out of homemade applesauce last winter and we were hoping for a good apple year.   It's here and we're trying to take advantage of it.

The kids love helping make the sauce (at least for about 5 minutes of every batch, then they get bored).

It's been working out well this year for Matt to take either Clare or Karl and the fourwheeler to get apples.  I tried taking Karl and Nora with a friend the other day.  The kids didn't like the tall weeds that kept getting in their faces or the fact that they couldn't reach the apples themselves.  We didn't last very long with these little two.

Nora loves to help but cranking goes pretty slow with her at the wheel.

On Friday we finished our 103rd quart of canned applesauce.  100 was our goal but if the apples stay good and we have time we might find ourselves doing more.

The only problem with making applesauce is that it requires time indoors. On both Tuesday and Thursday we took a break to just play outside.

And a fall trip to the pond:

Colors over the eastern field.  Just gorgeous.  Feeling so blessed to live here!!

Taking a break to snuggle with Snowflake:

Snowflake has been a very popular kitty at this house.  She's super friendly and amazingly loves the kids, although she's been hiding from Karl lately.  He's rough with her when he gets excited and no kitty really loves being tossed down the basement stairs or swung about under her armpits.  She caught her first mouse a week ago and we were so proud of her.  Now we're just waiting for her to catch more.  Molly's been taking down a good amount of voles in the yard - we find them dead in the grass.  She did that in Hancock too; voles seem to be her specialty.  Hopefully between the two of them, we have few rodents around this winter.