...keeps the doctor away. 

Or I hear you can just drink a glass of cider now and then and call it good.

   It's that time of year...when the weather turned crisp and the branches bow low to the ground, pregnant with countless ripe, round fruits.  When we climb ladders and pick and gather and join friends and press them into sweet, sweet cider....which is really the only perfect drink to accompany a giant bowl of popcorn in the winter months. 

    I have fond memories of making cider with my family, youth group, school friends.  It is work, but it hardly feels like it.  More like playing, but then you have a wonderful product at the end of it all.  A win-win, really.  Our friends Jess and Greta Ropp make their own cider every year with a homemade (!!) cider press fashioned by Jess' dad.  Greta and I were talking about cider and of course I lamented missing the tradition with my family, so she was kind enough to invite us to their own family's cider-making.  How very kind.

And of course I jumped on that. 

    The apples we brought for our cider were from our neighbor's trees, which they so kindly made available to us.  We really have the nicest neighbors you could find just about anywhere. 

   Charlotte was such a trooper, riding along and taking in all the sights and smells being a cheery, little gem.

*Note* We did not press all of those apples.  They were there for the youth group cider-making fundraiser.  Just didn't want you think we were ciderholics or something.
    Jess and Randy, tucking the apple pieces in for the night, right before their bedtime story and a good tight squeeze....o.k. it's getting late, I shouldn't be writing.  Or speaking.  Or even really thinking for that matter.




      Oh honey if you would have only made a normal expression this could have been our Christmas card!!  Of course then our Christmas card would have Doug and Matthias on it.  And no Jocelyn.  It was a good thought though....

   Cider was pressed, memories were made, and it was all around a lovely time.  Thanks, Ropp family for having us, we definitely enjoyed ourselves.  And I am greatly anticipating all that cider to drink, hot or cold, throughout the winter.  Have already started into it, actually.

Have yourselves a happy, apple, Fall.