Apples, Apples and More Apples

I commented before about how much I love a good deal and apples and here I am again, with more apples and a better deal! My wonderful neighbors have three apple trees and this year they have been particularly blessed with apples. In turn, they bless the rest of us with apples by the bucket. I don't mean kids bucket, or ice cream bucket, I mean good old five gallon feed pail buckets! Our family loves apples, apple pie filling with french toast, apple butter and apple crisp. More than anything, we go through gallons of apple sauce over the course of the winter. We love it plain, with sugar, cinnamon, cream, in bread, to replace 1/2 the butter in baked goods and whatever else we can do with it. I wish you all had e-smell so that you could enjoy our house as much as we do. To top it off, I have a vanilla scented pod in my warmer.... Like pie a la mode.... mmmmmmmm pie.....

School = Schedule = Sanity

I love school, in every way. I love new pencils, new (to us) clothes, new grade levels and student planners, and new schedules. Even though my alarm goes of at 5:30, and boy is hubby excited about that one, lol, I love the idea of each new day starting of quietly in the dark where I can collect my thoughts for the day. My oldest slips into the routine of school so easily every year I never worry that he won't pound up the steps shortly after I get up. My second one... not so much. It is like pulling teeth to get that girl out of bed. Number 3 is like that too, but since he doesn't have to be at school until after lunch, not really a problem. The baby? Well, I think he is already showing signs of being more like the oldest, so all is good.
Between school starting and the garden, things have been busy around here. The sweet corn is nearly done, I have a batch drying right now on my counter, and the tomatoes are not yet red, so you know what that means? Apples.
I am going to do applesauce, sliced apples for pie and cobbler, dried apples, apple butter, and whatever else I can think of to do with them since we get them for free from our neighbor. You can't beat free... just ask Laura about her tomatoes.