Strawberry Pickin'

A few years ago I took the kids to pick strawberries at a farm about an hour away. Eli loved it (Maddux was in the back-pack carrier still), so I thought I'd try again. The weather was supposed to be awesome this week, so I picked the only open day we had this week and decided to bite the bullet on naps/room time in the name of fun. Maddie and I picked Eli up from school about 40 minutes early so we could get on the road well before lunchtime.

The drive took about an hour, but I popped in a CD of our church worship band and the kids were totally entertained for the drive (yay for not having a CD player in the car for six months to make some music new again!) We got there and the kids were practically running to the strawberry patches. I got them each a bucket, gave them a quick lesson on picking (pick from the long stem, stay away from white and green berries, and have fun), and they were off! We only ended up picking for one row because they got each and every berry there, burning themselves out a bit. But we had two buckets that were pretty full. After quickly paying, I grabbed the lunch I'd packed and we found a picnic bench to use. Even though we had water, sandwiches and some dried fruit, all the kids wanted was strawberries, of course. I let them each have a few handfuls before packing up and heading home.

I'm not sure how, given the busy morning for both kids, the blue-sky-sun-beating down-on-us afternoon, and the excitement at the patch, but neither kid napped on the way home. Maddie went down for about 30 minutes when we got home, but that was it.