"Berry Juicy!"

That was the quote of the day today.  Annika said it regarding the strawberries we spent the previous hour picking.  She thought she was pretty clever.  She gets her punny humor from her mama (I can thank my VP side for that...you know who you are!).  Poor girl.

But, first before I go any further, I want to thank all of my readers for their kind comments, texts, and emails regarding My Letter to my Children. As I told one of my friends, "I was just speaking from my heart." :) It's good to know that I am not the only one who has these apprehensions about summer.  Some of it may come from our mutual feelings regarding that website. As much as I enjoy perusing and scrolling alllll the way down to the bottom of my Pinterest homepage, I think it is very easy to get caught up in the idea that you must have the perfect summer, with the perfect kids, wearing the perfect outfit, in your perfect kitchen, doing the perfect ab workout because you have eaten just about every perfect brownie that has ever been pinned on that darned site!!! O.k. I need to stop. This is stuff for a whole other post.

Anywho, back to the purpose of this post. We went strawberry picking today. I checked the website before we left. I called the hotline before we left. There were berries for the picking. So we left. We got there 40 minutes later and the ever so nice country-ish gentleman said, "We're picked out for today."

Wha? Alllrighty.

Made me regret the 3 seconds before when I cried out to the kids "Who's ready for berry picking?!?!" And there was a resounding, in that even-louder-because they-are-all-in-the-car yell, "WE ARE!!!"

Umm, well, this is awkward.

I get that look from my husband.  You wives you know that look. The look that says "I drove 40 minutes in a van with four kids only to eat our lunch sitting in the hot grass and I don't get any berries out of the deal?!" Side note, he had just gotten done with a 2 hour bike ride and a 12 mile run before we jumped into the van to head out to the berry patch. Another awkward moment.  See, this is why I don't go anywhere.

So...we asked nicely if we could at least sit by the pond and eat our lunch.  We pulled into the parking lot and Dan said, "Get out. Go into that patch and see what you can see."  So I walked in like I owned the place (another wonderful trait I picked up from that VP side), and went to see what I could see. And I saw strawberries!  Apparently, they were pretty picked over.  It was the first day of picking, and people had already been there since 7:45 a.m. It was now 11:45.  So I grabbed a box, and the nice lady that worked there (seriously, they were all Kansas country nice) told me to go to the far rows and I should be able to find some berries, I just may have to reach into the bushes a little more. Dan and the kids soon followed and we found strawberries! They were warm and red and ripe and oh so "berry juicy!" Wonderful! Just wonderful!

"Official Taste Tester"

Strawberry Picking Experts!

Yum

We ended up picking about 9 1/2 pounds. Not to shabby for a Saturday morning.  So, day 1 of summer vacation and we have already ventured out of the house and made a memory. If we only make one more memory, I will call it a successful summer!