I am not alone in my love of fall in the blogsphere. It seems ever blog I read in is love with the colors, flavors, textures, and crispness of fall.

I love fall for all the usual suspects: apple cider, the sense of renewal, school supplies, the scent of the air. I also have a bonus reason to love fall: it's when I both met and two years later married Mr. Cleaver. So the fall is very special to us both.

So this past Saturday we engaged in some traditional fall activity and went on our third annual apple-picking trip. We really liked the orchard we had been going to in Illinois, so the standards were high for our first Maine venture. It had so have a few things: 1 - a wide variety of apples, 2 - pumpkins, and 3- (most importantly) apple cider doughnuts. Seriously, I live for my once-a-year shot to eat apple cider doughtnuts hot out of the fryer. I keep thinking about trying to make them on my own, but I think it might take something away from the experience. That said, and I'm not promising anything (having still not posted an actual S'more pie recipe), don't be surprised if apple cider doughnuts appear on this blog in the next month or so.

Ricker Hill Orchards was a hit on all three points. Crisp juicy apples (organic and non), delicious hot doughnuts (weekends only), cheery pumpkins, and amazing views. Not to mention the fantastic play area.

Oh, and this is pure genius, they had giant slingshots for the rotten apples. See if you can spot Mr. Cleaver's apple in the photo above. The boy below's name is David (I didn't catch the irony until I was captioning the picture) and he asked me to take a picture of him, so I was happy to oblige.

David slings an apple