Let me take a minute to be completely honest. I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself when it came to putting this fundraiser for Hope’s Door together. I had no concrete goals set or solid numbers I wanted to reach in place, but I was aiming high.

Not surprisingly, it left me completely and utterly disappointed until a little voice of reason chirped in my ear and gave me a healthy dose of perspective. This has been happening a lot lately. It sounds trite, but the lessons my children have taught me in the last month or so leave me scrambling to heave my jaw from the floor.

I really want to love fall. I really, really do. And, I mean, there are pieces of it that I love. The smell in the air, the crispness, sweater weather, the coziness of burning fall spice candles and snuggling under a blanket, the leaves.

My problem with fall is that I know what comes right after it. Bare branches, the loss of greenery, numbing temperatures, snow. Part of me feels like loving fall just encourages winter to get here more quickly.

I realize that’s crazy. But it doesn’t stop me from believing it.

In an effort to be less mean to fall and to love on it a little harder without associating it with seasonal affective disorder—and to soak up all of the mild days we can before we’re locked inside, hermetically sealed until a stupid groundhog tells us what’s up—I decided to take the girls down to one of our favorite places: the Peekskill Riverfront.

In our house, we don’t need no stinkin’ equinox. We know it’s officially fall once we make our annual apple picking pilgrimage—kind of like how blog readers know it’s officially fall by the sudden inundation of apple picking photos in their feed. #sorrynotsorry 😉

Today I’m over at Wee Westchester talking about our favorite place to go apple picking each fall: Wilkens Farm. Since I had about 8,000 photos from that day, I thought I’d share a few here too.