Apple Butter Makin' Days!

Here in Mount Vernon, Apple Butter Makin' Days has arrived again. You can read what our chamber of commerce says about ABMD here. ABMD is one of the fall festivals that they have in almost every town in this region. Crafters set up booths and sell things and all the churches and organizations have booths and activities. It's always the second weekend of October, and it's a blast. The kids get out of school for Friday, and there's a huge parade on Saturday. Matt's parents usually come down and in fact are here right now! (Hi Mom and Dad!) This year my mom was able to come down, too--Yay!

We're already having so much fun! Matt spent all day cooking a huge fried chicken dinner--one of only 3 times we eat fried chicken in a year. It was soooo good. The kids got to do a lot of stuff today (including helping to clean the house for company, but not only that!), and I worked for a couple of hours at the PTA booth in the morning.

Tomorrow, though, is the big day. The parade starts at 9:00, and we have invited several friends to come sit on our porch, because the parade goes right by our house! That's one reason we never want to move out of this house. It's the best parade I've ever seen. All our kids are usually in it, because everyone has a float in the ABMD parade, but this year David just wants to sit on the porch and watch instead of riding on the soccer float.

The only drawback is the huge crowds that pour into town on Saturday. It's great for the town, and brings in a ton of business, but it's very crowded, and I start to wish all these people would go away--and leave ABMD to us townies! But it's not so bad, and people have a lot of fun.

And yes, if you were wondering, we really do make apple butter. At about 6:00 tomorrow morning, the giant cauldrons will be set up over the fires on the square, and thousands of apples will be converted into apple butter. We always buy a lot of it, so if you want apple butter for Christmas, this would be a good time to let us know.