I’m going to just continue beating my obnoxiously loud drum over here and declaring that living near your adult siblings is the best thing ever. I will never quite know how we managed it, but we live 9 hours from both sets of our parents… and yet have one brother and his wife on our street, another brother in the neighborhood, and another brother and his wife just a couple hours away.

Last weekend we headed to Charlottesville for a quick visit to Zach and Liz. [What’s that? You wanted the links back to their wedding? So glad you asked – here and here. ]  Since sleep-training Henry, we have loved the ease of traveling with him. Because he is our true car-seat-hating urban baby, we bathed and fed him Friday night, and then tucked him into the car-seat instead of his crib. There was a brief period of resistance at first, but his firm bedtime kicked in and he passed out, leaving James and me to enjoy a ride of conversation and podcasts, rather than baby screams.

Charlottesville is just the prettiest town, and it has some of the best orchards. I went to Carter Mountain a couple years ago, but this was James’ first time. James and I have very different approaches to apple picking. For him, it is simply that – apple picking. For me, apple picking is more of a metaphor for “bask in autumnal concepts and eat donuts.” There were probably more pictures taken than he would have liked, but we did pick enough apples to snack on and consumed some quality donuts, so I’m calling it a win. Henry also got to gnaw on an apple after I chewed the peel off (such a mom thing!), and he could barely contain himself from the excitement. I guess when you’ve had nothing but milk and oatmeal cereal, an apple would be truly exciting. You will see below when we tried to take the apple away for him to have a photo with his aunt and uncle and he was NOT PLEASED.

But enough words- on to photos!(Side note: Can someone explain to me how we are supposed to be tucking in our shirts these days? I see the full tuck, half tuck, side tuck, and I am confused. Explanation with photos please.)“GIMME BACK THAT APPLE.”- Angry Hank. Our return trip was slightly less tranquil, as it fell during the Witching Hour of Certain Screaming instead of the Bedtime Hour of Powerful Sleep Drive, but we survived. And I would do it again in a heartbeat for a sunny fall day picking apples with my favorite people.