Today, My parents, my nephew, and I went to a harvest farm, where they let you pick apples and other kinds of fruit.
It was great, we had a blast!

We picked Golden Delicious apples, Red Delicious apples and Empire apples.
We also picked Seascape Strawberries, raspberries, and a few blackberries.

It was nice because the guy said they didn't spray a lot of pesticides and all that junk on their fruit, so it's way way way healthier than storebought. In the actual store, they had freshly made jam (we got peach, blackberry, and blueberry), pies (got peach), honey, pickles, and other really great fresh healthy stuff.

When we got home, I immediately wanted to try the blueberry jam. I'm only used to really cheap store-bought grape jelly. Never even tried jam before.
As soon as I tasted the blueberry jam, I fell in love with it! The first thing that blurted out of my mouth was, "How can I eat store-bought jelly ever again after tasting THIS?!?!?!?!"
Something that was healthy AND tasted good.....I never thought there was such a thing!

As time moves by, the homestead idea gets more and more appealing to me!

On another note, my parents can no longer afford the house mortgage, so in about 7 months, the bank is going to foreclose on our house.
My family is looking at the positive side of this. We were thinking that maybe we could rent a house out in the country (like we were today at the harvest farm).
If you couldn't already tell, besides the fact that my parents love country music, we are very city-folk. My mother lived most of her life in Chicago, and I was born there and lived there a while too.
Even where we live in is a pretty big city, over 200,000 people.

And I must admit, going out to the harvest farm today, we kept pointing out the horses and cows and thought how weird it was that the little country towns didn't have atms at every corner or that there was only one subway and one resturaunt in the whole town!

I think I am making steps toward having my parents accept the idea that I want to live at a homestead.

I'm sweeping and dusting my room regularly now, which is a huge improvement for me.
I'm still not allowed anywhere near the washing machine. My older sister nearly destroyed ours when she and her family lived with us a few years ago, and my mother thinks I will be as careless.

I've convinced my mother to teach me how to make noodles slathered in butter.
She won't teach me on how to use an oven though, since I'm prone to burns.