Holdermans in Mad City: Family Apple Picking

It's so nice to have something fun to write about on my post. It's been a rough summer - moved Mom three times till we found the right place for her, in a Group Home where they specialize in Alzheimer's residents and she is happy and safe there. In her honor, after all the years she and I picked apples then made apple jelly (well, she made pies, I don't do pies)I suggested the rest of the family start our own tradition of picking apples and then making apple jelly. The jelly is best when you make it from just-picked apples. It was a cool, damp day but we weathered it - me, Amy, Laurie, Kimberly, Cody and Samantha. Boy, with 6 people picking, it doesn't take long to fill a bushel. We went back to Grandpa's Orchard in Niles, where Mom, Jack and I liked to go and we even took Edd and Sue there a couple times when they visited in October a couple of years. We mainly got Red Delicious for the jelly, but got a bunch of Golden Delicious too for eating. Then we headed to Amy's for the real work. We brought Mom over so she could enjoy being at the house, around all of us. Not sure why we didn't take pictures in the kitchen, making the jelly - maybe we were just too busy answering questions like "how does this scale work?", "what is pectin?", "is this a rolling boil?", "how do you get juice out of the apples?" It was a fun time! We're all looking forward to next year and doing it again.