Carter Mountain Apple Picking - 2011

Every year the Roeders and the Starkeys go to Carter Mountain in Charlottesville, VA to eat donuts  pick apples. There are other attractions like apple donuts, hay rides, apples donuts, pumpkin picking, apple donuts, wine tasting, apple donuts, etc. You get the picture.

Carter Mountain is exercise. Good fun, cool air exercise but it's a work out. Every year we go we seem to add another member of the family that wants to walk instead of just ride in the stroller. So this year it literally took an hour to get up the mountain. If we were adults by ourselves we would have booked it to the top of the mountain and worked our way down in a timely manner. Instead, we have children wondering off into the orchards. Babies rolling downhill. Children complaining of being tired (George). It's like a G rated Benny Hill cartoon. It's almost like the good people at Carter Mountain know what kind of ordeal it is for families (or lazy people) and have apples that have been picked at the bottom of the hill. Every year I am only half kidding when I say "Why don't we just get these apples?" Not that I am too lazy to go up the mountain, not at all. The view is incredible.

But because I know I am going to look like this when we get to the bottom. 

BTW, Mark still had a back issue so he was doing all the awesome picture taking while I was doing the heavy lifting.

Every year, one of us decides the process of going up the mountain is going to effing slow so they pull a "hazel" (private joke) and just book it up the mountain and wait for the rest of us. This year it was Greg. Can't say that I blame him. 

Now, I may sound like I am complaining but I don't intend that. It really was a ton of fun. It always is. It's so beautiful up there. We get pictures of the babies every year and watch them grow on that mountain. It's like a rite of passage for parents. And if you don't go, you don't get pictures like this.

It truly is a beautiful experience every year. We are so happy to have wonderful friends to share it with.