Good and Bad at the Apple Orchard

Fall is the season of the apple orchards here in Michigan. There are countless ones to go to, but by far, my favorite is Three Cedars Farm. They have the best stuff for kids I've found and we love going there. We went there on Wednesday and luckily managed to make it right before a big storm. I was most excited to show Christian all the little animals - the pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, and especially the bunnies.


Each is in a pen decorated according to a nursery rhyme and you can press a button and hear the story told. I assumed he'd love them. Proved me wrong. This is what every picture of Christian with the animals looks like:


Apparently these guys are terrifying!!


Heaven help us when he walked passed the lamb and it baaa'd at him! He about jumped out of his skin. His little legs couldn't carry him away fast enough. Even seeing his sibs petting the animals didn't help, so I gave up and found him some things more up his alley.


Then he was fine. :) I've never seen this kind of thing anywhere else - a sandbox full of corn. He loved it.



I also had to take pictures of Benjamin's love of jumping on hay bales. He does that every year, since back when he was so little that people would gasp when they'd see him and say, "Doesn't that terrify you!?" It just makes him so happy!



And I had to take a picture of them both on it


to compare to this one:


What a difference a couple years makes!!

Then it was Bella's turn to have trouble. I saw this funny little bench and asked them to all sit on it for a picture. Everyone was sitting and I was snapping the shot when Bella suddenly jumped sky high. So this was the picture I got of Bella getting stung by a wasp.


I love the perplexed look on Benjamin's face like, "What's up with her?!" I felt so bad for her. It bled like crazy, which surprised me. I didn't think stings bleed. But I guess when your hand is that small, that stinger can go quite deep. She cried for 20 minutes and her hand got red, hot, and swollen. We decided to call it day. Soon thereafter she stared to shiver and developed a fever of 101.7. I thought the fever was a sign she got the strep that Benjamin had had, but she didn't develop any of the other symptoms of strep, so I think it was the sting. I kept an eye on her, but luckily by the next day, everything was back to normal and her hand looked fine. She got lots of mileage out of that story in preschool the next day, though. :)

Overall it was a great day at the orchard. Funny thing - we never ate or drank a single apple product. Between the sting and the storm that started just at the same time, we went home empty handed. We'll definitely go back again.