Sky Top Orchard

One thing I have truly missed about not being in Michigan, is picking apples in the fall. So, when I found out there were orchards around North Carolina, I searched around for the best ones in the area. 

I didn't search very hard because Sky Top was the first one that popped up on Google. Just looking at pictures made me really excited. 

Luckily, Courtney was able to take off a day during the week, so it wouldn't be so busy when we went and we wanted to take the trip before school started. It's close to a 2 hour drive, but it was a beautiful drive. 

It sure was a hot day, but that didn't stop us from having loads of fun. The kids really enjoyed running around and finding the perfect apples to pick. They even enjoyed the apple cider and apple cider donuts, which they wanted seconds of. 

McKaila is excited about picking some apples

Beautiful views!

All our apples! 

McKenna's favorite, the sheep. She named them Lambie

Going to Sky Top Orchard was the perfect family fun day and we can't wait to go back again or even check out other orchards in the area!

Adventures with Auntie

We have been very lucky to have my sister, Amber living only 6 hours from us now, so she's been able to come visit us here in North Carolina more often. So, when she's visiting, we make sure we go out and explore somewhere. 

This visit we decided to take a drive to see if we could get the kids on some ponies, since that's all they talk about. When we got to where we could take them on some ponies, we noticed there was more along the drive and came across the Carolina Raptor Center. We decided to stop there and take a look. It ended up being a pretty cool find. It was a nature walk while you looked a many different birds.  

The kids loved seeing all the birds, but they couldn't stop talking about riding the ponies, so after exploring the birds for a while, we got back into the car and headed back to where the horses were. When we arrived it was cool, because there was some kind of horse competition, so all these littles girls were riding their horses around. The kids thought that was so cool, but nothing was cooler than when they saw their little pony trot over, so they could ride him. 

Auntie took a turn on a horse so the girls weren't too scared about going on the pony. I think either way, the girls would have been fine, because they got on that pony without any questioning. The girls, including Auntie, loved there 3 laps of trotting around the circle. 

It's always so nice having family here, and feel incredibly blessed that we are so close to our family being here in North Carolina. It's always fun to explore new things while they are here, but it's always a great time, when we're just relaxing at home and enjoying each others company.

Friends, Also Known As Family

We were so excited when I got a phone call from Jodi asking if it would be ok if we had some visitors for a while. ummm... yes it's ok!! We love visitors!! 

So, Jodi, Gina, and all 3 of Gina's kids, Dirk, Millie, and Lottie, drove from Michigan to North Carolina for some fun! The last time our kids were all together it was when McKenna was just turning 1, so it's been some time. And even then, they didn't really get much interaction with each other, other then sitting next to each other so we could take pictures of all of them together at Tulip Time. 

We sure had a full house, but it was so much fun!!

The kids didn't waste anytime getting out all the toys and playing

McKenna was in love with Dirk it was the sweetest thing

Just like with all our visitors, we like to show them around! 

First stop had to be at Joe Gibbs Motorsports. They aren't NASCAR fans, but it's still cool seeing everything and since it's only a couple miles down the road from our house, we needed to show them.

Lunch time

We wanted to do something fun, but be out of the heat, so we head to a little aquarium in the mall. Yes, in the mall... haha It was a small aquarium, but we all had lots of fun roaming around. There wasn't a lot of people there since it was a week day, so it was nice to let the kids run around a bit and not having people in your way when you're trying to look at all the fish.

Logan loved this... it took a while before he would leave this area

Lottie and Logan

We were able to do a behind the scenes tour, which was pretty cool and very interesting. Learned somethings that we didn't even know about, but the coolest thing is, we got to look into the big tanks from up above. 

Even Amber got to drive in from Maryland, to join in on the fun. 

It was such a fun time having all the kids together and being able to have some adult conversations with Gina and Jodi! It's always so much fun when we are all together and hope we can all do that again really soon!!