The week before my travel to Antarctica, the little changes of Fall were just beginning to set into the New Jersey air. One evening I was chatting, my friend Chelsea, where we decided we wanted to do a little celebration of the season and go apple picking. We pulled up our weather app and chose the next non-rainy day. When that day came, we started the day off with a little late treat at my favorite cafe. Drinks in hand, we headed to the orchard. This was Chelsea’s first time apple picking so naturally she had the desire to bake an apple pie – which she only ever wanted to do if she had the opportunity to pick the apples herself. This moto is something I can definitely get behind, especially since the process reminds me of the old nursery rhyme “The Little Red Hen”. (If you know, you know).
When we got the orchard, we met with the farmer who went over their system and the different types of apples they had on site. Chelsea and I grabbed a medium sized bag and started heading towards the trees. As we climbed the hill, we quickly realized that this wasn’t going to be a typical fall day but instead, New Jersey decided to hit us with some sweltering sun and some beautifully hot 80 degree weather. This isn’t too surprising since Jersey usually has random heat fluxes in the fall – and really the weather just does whatever it wants anyway. Regardless of this, small uncomfortable detail we still brought along our flannels and did a little pretending as if it was a cool fall day.
After frolicking through the fields, we stopped at the grocery to get the rest of our ingredients so we could begin our pie making process. Chelsea did most of the work but I happily prepped the ingredients and peeled the apples. As we were making the pie (again, mostly Chelsea), we were chatting about how fun this is and it’s a shame that I’m going to be missing the rest of the holidays while I’m away at work.
Suddenly, we had the bright idea to celebrate all the holidays in the next few days prior to me setting sail! And as two people who are always down to do something a bit ridiculous we began to map out what we wanted to do for each. While we set the apple filling into the freezer to cool, we popped over to a few stores to get everything we needed to make the perfect, Merry St.-Hallows-Giving-Hoppity-Years happen!
First holiday we celebrated was Halloween. We raided my families box for costumes and drove over to Chelsea’s place where we proceeded to go trick or treating at her neighbors houses. Without giving them a warning we showed up to their porch and when they opened the door we shouted “Trick Or Treat!”. Now luckily, she’s pretty close with her neighbors or this could have went south pretty quickly. They laughed at our shenanigans and found some random treats to put into our pillow cases. Which we were beyond grateful for! We then headed back to my place to carve pumpkins and watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch (the original and not the remake).
Once we got our Halloween fill and the apple pie was out of the oven, the next holiday on our roster was New Years. Yes, the timing was out of order but when you’re trying to cram in all the holidays in a little under 4 days, you have to be flexible. So we hit the bar with two other friends and told them the plan. Right before midnight we pulled out our noise makers and started the count down. Three, two, one – Happy New Years we cheered! And if you’re curious, most people in the bar didn’t even flinch at our untimely celebration.
The following day, we celebrated Thanksgiving with turkey themed crafts, a make shift thanksgiving meal and the homemade apple pie. Then with a little planning, we got our derby team to celebrate Christmas with a white elephant after a Monday night practice. We even set up a little tree at the bar and everything! It came out super cute and even brought a few smiles to the other random patrons at the bar. We also crammed in Saint Patrick’s day and Valentines day that night too – everyone received a little Valentines day card from me, candy included of course!
Then my last day before I left, as I was rushing around to get everything packed, Chelsea brought over an Easter egg for me while wearing an adorable set of bunny ears completing the holiday festivities. Honestly, it was such a great time and made me extremely grateful to have such wonderful people in my life. I will surely miss them and who knows, I might just make this holiday week into a tradition if I decide to go back again next year.
