this weekend...

my mom is here. still. (not in a bad way). my dad just left us this morning. still waiting for the phone call to tell us that he made it home ok. he's probably somewhere over canada right now. or maybe the pacific ocean.

elijah with his apple (yes, that is my hand. i am oh so talented.)

had a great time while he was here...a little bit too much time in the car...but that was hard to avoid. thursday...we drove up to apple hill. little did i know how far it is or how much there is to do once you get there. i had always just assumed it was simply one apple farm...but it is actually about 50 different farms. some with apples, some with pumpkins, some with christmas trees...a few wineries, a brewery...the list goes on. obviously we couldn't do or see everything...so we stuck to just one of the apple farms and saw/experienced it in its entirety. we had hot spiced apple wine to warm our hands while we walked around...tasted some amazing apple pie and fudge...went to visit the little christmas tree farm they have on the edge of their property...and shopped...of course. we bought lots of apples and i got some of my christmas shopping done at the craft stands. it was a lot of driving for the short amount of time we got to spend there (relatively) but it was fun and well worth doing again.

everyone. minus me. as usual.

then...on friday...we left for the trek down to southern california to visit luke and his girlfriend, heather. we spent two nights down there, seeing the sights, visiting the beach, eating good food, going to church at one of luke's friend's dad's church (that last part looks really weird. too many apostrophes i think.) it was wonderful to see luke and heather again...to see them in their element...to visit their campus...see their world for a bit. just wish it could've been a bit longer. oh...and the drive back. yuck. elijah was definitely not a fan of that. he actually did a lot better than i thought he would...but he was still a bit of a crank-ster. not that i blame him. poor baby. but thankfully...we are done with long car rides for a while...
rather than inundate you with hundreds of pictures from the past week...i'll keep it to just a few for now. but hopefully i'll continue to add a picture and a story here and there over the next couple weeks. i want to write about the pictures so i can remember what i wanted to say about them when it comes time to scrapbook them. i figure this is a good place to do that...