The Tertiary Autumn Applelooza

Last month we hosted our Third Annual Autumn Applelooza. Each October we invite a group of friends who live in the DC area, most of them from our law school days, to join our family as we celebrate the fruits of fall. We change up the activities a bit from year to year, but two themes remain: autumn and apples.

Due to a very rainy and cold October day, the festivities were moved indoors. While we usually enjoy being outside for these activites, our wood stove provided some nice ambiance to the indoor celebrations.

Before the guests arrive.

This year our first official activity was apple pie baking. We have done this activity in the past, but this year it had a few new twists: no recipes and the pies were pot-pie sized. We had some VERY creative entries. Some of the more original entries included:

-Powerbar Pie - no actual apples used, just cider, flour, oats and sugar. Thus it was the texture of a powerpar.
-Apple Pie Potpurri - a pie made with apples, apple peels, pumpkin puree, chocolate chips, coke, and who knows what else. All the work of Andrew Glenn.
-Pumpkin-apple pie - this pie was far more edible than the aforementioned pies.

The crew hard at work.

Joe distracting Chris as he works diligently on his high fiber apple pie with peelings.

The finished products were judged and prizes were awarded based on presentation and taste. Each person present was allowed to vote by ranking their top three pies in both categories.

Trisha tallied the votes and the winners were: Tim & Jennifer S. in taste and Dan Y. in presentation.

Pumpkin carving was the next activity for the afternoon. All the pumpkins were donated from the Pull Pumpkin Patch.

Dan diligently working on his pumpkin.

The finished products were (from left to right): a horse, a letter "G" (for the Glenns), a traditional jack'o lantern, a Jayhawk, and a scary and strange creation from Joe.

After eating chili and cornbread for dinner. We finished off the days' festivities with a game of Apple Jeopardy. Joe created all of the questions, written in classic Jeopardy style. Our guests divided up into teams for the competition. The teams were as follows: Men, Women, Other (Tim Shuman). Every quesiton had something to do with apples and there were two rounds, plus final Jeopardy. It was a close competition for much of the game, but Tim from team Other was the final victor.

The kids, of course, had a great time, too. Xandra, Theia, and Liyah enjoyed the company of Madeline for the afternoon.

Madeline checking out Liyah's exersaucer.

Santa Bear in the ducky costume.

It's unclear why Xandra has no clothes on, but I think they were all playing dress up. At least the bear is modest.