Thanksgiving Apples

Thanksgiving apples has been a church tradition for my family since I was at least 8 years old. The year I turned 8 my dad became a pastor of his own congregation in a small town called Alamosa, Colorado. Alamosa is located about 45 minutes north of New Mexico in the San Luis Valley. Alamosa was where I grew up after 8 years of age until I left for college at age 18. The first Thanksgiving we were there it was decided (by I'm not sure who) that we would bring a basket full of a variety of apple types to the Thanksgiving service. Any person present in the service could step to the front and simply state what they were thankful for and then they could choose an apple.
I honestly don't remember the relevance of the apples themselves and all I can remember as a child was they were a reward for having the courage to step up in church and speak. Today my parents invited us to their church because my dad wanted to introduce Ronan and Inara to his congregation. Today was the Thanksgiving service and the basket at the front of the auditorium indicated that my parents had carried the apple tradition from the Alamosa church to their new one.
I watched as Landon and Xander went to the front and told what they were thankful for and got their very own Thanksgiving apples. Xander said he was thankful for the stickers his Grandma Fullmer gave him and Landon was thankful for everything. At the end I still don't know what the specific significance of the apples is because see there was one thing in the way of me catching this detail. My parent's entire church services are entirely in Spanish and I know maybe a total of 20 words.
The service was finished and we headed to the basement of the church to have a meal with the English speaking part of the church. The food was good and my favorite was this pumpkin cheesecake type thing. It had whip cream on top then regular pumpkin pie on next and then a layer of regular cheesecake and the some of the most delicious graham cracker crust on the bottom.
The blog is early tonight and my day is far from over but I have to take Ronan to his sleep study in a little over an hour and I had to get tonight's blog in. I'll probably include the rest of tonight in tomorrow's blog. This is how I found Ronan sleeping during his nap today.
and here's Inara ready to leave for church.