More Strawberries!

Strawberries are still in season!

 

This time, we went with Dad to pick. 

 

Mark and I picked together:

While Laura "helped" Dad pick.

























Laura got a bit "sassy" when I tried to take her picture.  "No picture, mommy."  She's not shy about saying "Leave me alone!" these days.

 
















And we had quite the haul this time!  Two full baskets.




So what are the plans for these massive quantities of strawberries?  I am doing the freezing of some to use during the winter, especially for smoothies- and possibly for a pie.  DH is making jelly again (Yum!  We ate it all up last year!).  And Kiddo insists that he is making strawberry ice cream on Saturday.  Despite the fact that we don't have an ice cream maker.  As DH said - that could mean we buy some vanilla ice cream from the store and have strawberries on top!  After all - - I don't think kiddo will know the difference - so I definitely think that's good enough for this time.



Maybe the boy will wind up with an ice cream maker on his birthday or Christmas wish-list this year...

Supporting the community

In the last 12 hours or so, we have done 3 community events!  Whew!

First, I let the kids stay up way past their bedtime to see Frozen (the movie) at the local outdoor amphitheater. 

Then we want to the local agricultural festival at the fair ground.

And then, we stopped at our local "green" McDonalds for a craft, planting a seed, and some time in their play space.

Strawberry Season

It's mid-May - - which means one thing:  Strawberries!

We grab our bucket

We pick and pick and pick

Even the odd ones...

Then we eat up!

One of my favorite parts of summer:  Strawberry Desserts! 

Our strawberries from this trip are all gone... Time to go back!

Big Slide

This video captures differences in my kids, and I love it!  I wanted to post on facebook, but had trouble with it!

A little trip

I started this post from the plane, but never got around to finishing it!

While we were in Texas the first weekend in May, we went to Fossil Rim - essentially, a safari-like experience, where you drive your car through some amazing animals in a not-quite zoo setting.  You get to feed them, and you can see from the previous pictures that I posted that we got up close and personal with the giraffes!

Unfortunately, my "good" camera died shortly thereafeter.  These images were taken from my cell phone, and capture the last part of our tour, as well as a few other tidbits from our time in Texas!

On Safari, the last of the "major" animals we saw were Zebras!  As we were leaving the park, though, there was an Emu hanging out by the entrance.  I had Kiddo "dump" the rest of the food.  Well, this Emu must have been hungry because after the food was gone, the Emu stuck his head in the car and grabbed the empty brown bag right out of Kiddo's fingers!  A little scary, but very funny!

Here, Grandpa took Kiddo on a tractor ride.  And Baby-G was enjoying some of the crumbling muffins that her Grandma T had made!

"The Farm" where Grandma T and Grandpa D live in Texas has TWO ponds.  This picture shows that the back pond has no water.  I have never seen it empty!  Good thing they don't have any cows on their property at the moment- they would be expensive to keep watered!




Another special treat- helping Grandpa wind the grandfather clock.  Not all grandkids have been able to get this close to the precious clock!



We also enjoyed picking some of the onions right out of Grandpa's garden for dinner.  Grilled onions on top of steak - YUM!  Probably some of the freshest onions I've ever had in my lifetime...

The kids were pretty good on both plane-ride segments.

And here, a pretty cool picture that was painted by my brother-in-law!

Monkeys

My kids love it here.  I guess I am a bit too type A - it makes me nervous every time!

Wordless Wednesday