Strawberries

Today the kids and I got up early and went strawberry picking. Some people we know have lots of strawberry fields and had some U-Pick Strawberries for $.50/lb. Usually we go there and glean, which is where you can pick the leftovers for free but it is usually a lot harder to find good berries that way so this year we decided to see what it was like to do the U-Pick. I am sold on doing it that way from now on. There were lots of berries to pick and before we knew it we had picked about 75lbs of strawberries. I don't think we were even there for more than an hour and a half and some of that was spent visiting with the two other families that went. It was a fun morning and the weather was wonderful, just a bit overcast and cool. I had hoped to get pictures of the boys picking berries but they actually spent their time playing in the van, windows rolled down of course. But B#8 sure enjoyed eating a bowl full of unwashed strawberries all the way home.

I survived

Everyone big in our family went on a hike yesterday, leaving mom home with three toddlers. The girls alternated between being sorry for leaving me alone and reminding me that I have done this before. Yeah, about 15 years ago I reminded them. I'm not that young anymore. But things went very well. Here is my day in pictures...

The boys helped me make brownies.

B#8 thought you just plopped the butter in the mix instead of into a different bowl for mom to melt.

Mixing with not too much slinging of mix around.

Apparently you have to lick the spoons every time you make something. Thank goodness the brownies got cooked at a high temp. to take care of the germs B#8 left behind after double dipping his spoon.

Getting into everything while mom tried to clean up the kitchen.

Still getting into everything but they changed spots.

B#7 was such a big helper to me. Here he is dragging our flour bucket back to the pantry for me. It is very heavy.

We managed to make homemade hamburger buns for dinner. Here is B#8 rolling his dough.

And all the while that we three were working, B#9 either slept peacefully or sat in her high chair eating. What a sweet girl she is!

Father's Day

The guys in our family spent Father's Day on a building project. Not sure this is how I would want to spend Mother's Day but apparently dads don't mind grilling their own dinner and doing a building project for their children.

We had been talking for a while about building a play structure for the children but now that we have three little ones ready to play and another boy on the way we knew it was probably time to do more than talk about it. We don't get out and about too often with gas prices what they are and we spend alot of our days in the backyard with the children so this was an investment for us.

This is the finished project and yes, that is a goat in the yard, one of B#2's newest additions who loves to poke herself through the fencing to join the play.