When Life Hands You Lemons...

It's the wrong analogy, I know...but when life hands you lemons, go apple picking in Kansas!

Oklahoma has the absence of all things as we know as autumn.
I was pining for some cider donuts, apple picking and sweater weather.
Since we can't change the weather and nobody here knows what a cider donut is, we decided to go apples picking.
How difficult can it be, right?  Everywhere has apples, right?
WRONG.
The nearest orchard is over 100 miles away.  
Well.
If we're going to drive 100+ miles to get some apples, we might as well make an adventure out of it.
So off we went to Rose Hill, KS.
Meadowlark Farm, to be exact.
I had called early on Saturday morning and spoke with the owner, asking if they had pumpkins / apples / or anything else autumn.  We were out of luck for pumpkins, but apples they had.  "You know we're 2 1/2 hours from Oklahoma City, right?"
Yep.  We're strangers in a strange land - longing for the familiar.  An adventure wouldn't hurt us, either.
So off we went.

None of us had ever been in Kansas before - it took us a bit a couple hours all day before we were finished marveling that we WERE in Kansas, after all.
Two hours, a lot of highway, a couple dirt roads, a few casinos, dozens of oil jacks, countless windmills and an endless sky later - we were there.

We walked into the small shack that housed the Farm Store and the gentleman behind the counter saw us and said, "You folks are the ones from Oklahoma looking for an adventure, aren't you?"
Yes.  Yes, we are.
We picked up a couple pecks of apples, got a bunch of windfall apples to lower the price of our picking, went back for more apples and were directed off the beaten bath to discover a lone tree of Empire apples.
It was nice to do a familiar fall activity.
I mean, who knew there were apple orchards in Kansas?

Nate totally got the pumpkin cut out stuck on his head right after this.  He was freaking out - but it was pretty funny.

The rest of this week was pretty eventful.
We have been underwhelmed with the work we have seen Caroline bringing home from school.
Coming here, we knew that we *probably* weren't going to encounter the caliber of education that we were used to, but after doing our research and seeing Edmond consistently ranked as the best schools in Oklahoma, we figured things would be okay.
They were not.
A meeting with the principal, 5 teachers and a guidance counselor resulted in more questions than answers and brought us to the conclusion that home schooling is going to be the *only* way for these kids to maintain their level of education.
We're giving ourselves until the New Year to get unpacked, set up and a curriculum in place.
Then it's on like Donkey Kong.
I can't lie about this.  It's freaking petrifying.
Not only will I have to keep up the house / yard / laundry / care and upkeep of 5 other humans and 3 cats - now we're going to have to educate them , too?!?!
I'm sure the kids will already need a fair amount of counseling to come to terms with what dorks their parents are and how we dragged them all over the country in search of adventure/learning/experiences/weird stories for later.  We're going to have to double the counseling with the home schooling.
I need to do a little more research, but I think I"m set for a curriculum.  We're planing to do a lot of supplementation.  So hopefully it won't be a total drag.
Fingers crossed.  Prayers for success appreciated.