More Apple Picking

After returning from NY on Monday the 12th, I began a hellacious week of rehearsals with Grand Rapids Symphony Chorus for our performance of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.  Every night, I would rush home from work, pick up Maia, grab some food and head to rehearsal from 6:15 to 10:30/11 pm.   The production was complicated, involving the GR Symphony, GRS Chorus and GRS Youth Chorus performing the music simultaneously with the movie.  It was playing on a massive screen over our heads, like this:

Kath and I aren't particularly visible... but we're on the left side of the chorus.  Kath is in the front row, about 5 people from the left, I'm in the second row, 4 people from the left.

The review can be read here.  While performing this, I kept thinking two things...

1. I sooooooooo wish I could have been in the audience for this one.  I think it must have been an amazing experience on the other side of the stage.

2. The last time I performed with this group of musicians was the first time I felt Maia move while she was just a gummy bear in my womb.  What a difference 17 months makes!

So, despite our exhaustion, on Saturday the 17th, we went Klackle's orchards with Kath, Grandma Marcia, Emily, Adrian and Lydia. It was cold and overcast. Cloudy just seems to be our apple-picking weather!

Maia and Grandma Marcia

We all rode on their "wagons", pulled by a variety of tractors (a word which Maia learned in NY and used a lot!)

Jonagolds were our preference of the three varieties ready for picking on this weekend.

Emily

Lydia

Adrian

Maia went through several apples, and was almost as excited about them this time as she had been with the Macoun in NY.  I say 'almost' because she actually managed to drop a few of them after a few bites.  I don't think she would have let that Macoun go at Bouwman's!

These seem to me to be rare pictures of late: Just my mom with the kids.

Lydia and Grandma Marcia

Adrian and Grandma

Emily and Grandma

Aunt Kathleen and Maia

Lydia and Maia

The last trek we took was to find a pumpkin in the over-picked pumpkin patch.  We wished we hadn't bothered and wasted the time (we got stuck out there for a while, waiting for the wagons to bring us back, and the place is huge!)

Maia, however, enjoyed playing in the dirt, and adding the word pumpkin (Puhkuh?) to her vocabulary, and got to use the words apple (appp-oh?) and tractor (cak-tuh) quite a bit.