Tradition

This weekend I got to spend some ~quality time~ with my family at our lake house. I've been spending a lot of time applying to universities lately, so hanging out with my family felt more poignant, because this is the last fall before I move out. 

My family and I have a pretty stereotypical tradition of picking apples in the fall, and we've been going since forever. The highlight for me and my and my brother is always the incredible apple doughnuts that they make.

Here is a picture of my brother taking a bite of one and smiling involuntarily.

A close up: 

 We always start the day by disussing in a ridiculous amount of detail, which apple patch we are going to pick from first, and if we are going to sneak down to the lower part of the farm where most people aren't allowed in. When we get on the tractor ride that moseys towards the apples, we are always surprised at how slow the tractor drags us. When I was young the ride seemed like we were in a rocket ship, but now it is surreally slow paced.  

When we reach the trees, we sample a bunch of different apples, fighting over bites of the best ones, yet making sure every member of the family appreciates the sweetness of the ones that are the  best. My brother and I very quickly deteriorate from apple pickers into lumps, wandering around the field talking to eachother and throwing fallen apples as far as we can.

Eventually we all end up on the ground, exhausted by our (not very tiresome) work, which can be seen in my new favorite photo: 

This weekend was full of childhood memories, and I finished it off by watching one of my favorite movies: My Neighbor Totoro. I hadn't seen it in a while, but I knew it just as well as I used to.