Strawberry Picking



Back at the end of April, Carrie and I took the kids to pick strawberries one Saturday morning. We went to the Jerry Marsh farm in Locust Fork. It was about a 40 minute drive. I really had no idea what to expect, but it was a beautiful little piece of property out in the middle of nowhere, with rows and rows of strawberries.  

All the farm had was a little tent where you could get your baskets and pay, and that was it. It was definitely nothing overly special and no other activities there. But, it was such a fun experience! Of course I had to get 2 buckets for my crew, one for each kid. It was $10 for one, so for $20, we had more strawberries than I knew what to do with!

 The kids ate a few along the way too. Nothing better than a freshly picked strawberry! Rooney literally had strawberry juice all over her by the end. Not sure how much picking she really did...pretty sure she ate her weight in strawberries!

 

The kids spent about 30-45 minutes picking strawberries. It was fun watching them try to get the best ones, or the biggest ones, funniest shape, etc. Definitely worth the trip!

 I spent about an hour that afternoon cutting up strawberries. I froze 2 big bags full, kept 1 big bag for us to eat that week, and gave 1 big bag to the Reed's. It was a ton!

First thing the boys wanted to do with them was to make a strawberry milkshake. They are really into making their own milkshakes these days. They put anything and everything in them, and do it all themselves! They just find whatever they want in the pantry and fridge and go to town. It's fun. They had not done a plain strawberry milkshake yet, so they were pretty excited. We were keeping Rooney that night too, so she helped make it too! (that cup of strawberries ended up on the floor about 2 seconds after this pic was taken--ooops!)

 She LOVED it! They did a pretty good job if I must say so myself! The milkshake was fabulous!

The next day, we made strawberry muffins and they were the best strawberry muffins I have ever had. Such a fun little experience. We will definitely do it again next year!

And just because I don't have little girls that will let me play with their hair, I had to post a picture of sweet Roo who let me French braid her hair that night! We had so much fun!

Easter

We had a great Easter this year! The Easter bunny showed up, which was very surprising to Harrison because he was thinking that he had not been good enough for the Easter bunny this year. We never said anything about the Easter bunny not coming though! He just had it in his mind that he had not been a model little boy lately! :) It was like Christmas morning when he saw his little basket full though (the Easter bunny doesn't bring much--if it can't fit in a basket, it's not showing up on Easter Sunday!).

 

Why does he look so OLD in this picture!?!?!

 After a few obligatory pictures, it was off to church!

My family joined us for lunch at our house. Now that I am finally getting to host family gatherings, I brought out the Blue Willow china that Joel's grandmother gave us as a wedding present almost 12 years ago. She passed away shortly before we got married. I love this china and was so happy to finally get it out of the box! Shame on me for waiting this long!

 We had a little egg hunt too!

 Things were going SO well...

 Everyone was happy...

 Until Harrison found the golden egg! I did not even realize that Hudson was in the background until after I took these pictures.

 He was SO upset!!!

He threw his basket and stomped off, going inside, and locking himself in his room. He even missed lunch! It was hilarious...he may have gotten some of my competitive spirit! :)

The golden egg had about $1 in it. It was not high stakes at all. And, the boys were the one to fill it up so they knew what was in it! Haha!

My family ended up staying half the afternoon. It was such a beautiful day and we spent most of it playing in the yard! Hudson did finally come around. I can assure you that there will be no more golden eggs in our near future though!

The Rest of March

Well I'm tired of looking at my gray headed 8 year old Thomas Edison, so it's time for a new post. And I have over 300 pictures that I've taken since the beginning of March, so this is a little bit daunting! I will keep it short on this one because the rest of March was either pretty quiet, or I just don't remember anything that we did!

 

Our days/nights/weekends were filled with baseball. Every.single.night. Whew. We loved it, but we love that it is over too! :)

 

March is still busy season for me at work, and Joel was out of town for a few weeks that month as well, but we did get to go to the cabin for a few days at the end of spring break. Since our pups don't get much air time, here's one of my cute riding buddy, Chloe!

 We went down to the lake one day and checked on the progress of the new house. It's going to be amazing once it's finally done--which may take another year! :)

Carrie and Rooney joined us at the cabin and we drove over to the Pocket one day to see all the wildflowers in bloom.

April is up next!

Our Little Thomas Edison Turns EIGHT!

Hudson turned 8 on March 1st! I can't believe Joel and I have been parents for 8 years. It still literally feels like yesterday that he was born.

 

His class had their "Living Museum" presentations on his birthday, so for Hudson, that was extra fun! He picked Thomas Edison, which turned out to be perfect for him. I think he and Thomas Edison would have been great friends! They definitely have similar "engineer" brains! Ha! Hudson did all the research though which included reading multiple books, wrote a 2 page paper, and wrote a speech. It was a lot of work for him.

 

On the day of his birthday, he was up bright and early and ready to be Thomas Edison for the day! We even sprayed his hair gray although you can't really tell in the picture below.

 

 

He had a donut tower for breakfast...this was all I could come up with. Joel was out of town and having to get everyone ready that morning to drive carpool was pretty much chaos. But, we did sing to him and let him blow out the candle! He opened one present too!

 

Parents were invited to attend the Living Museum and watch the kids do their speeches. It was great! I was SO proud of Hudson! His speech was hilarious and he had so much inflection in his voice while he was saying it that it was just perfect! All of the kids did great! I definitely learned a lot about some famous Americans!

When we got home that evening, Hudson begged to open another gift! Joel didn't want him opening everything without him being home, but I just couldn't say no when he wanted to open "just one more!" We ended up celebrating the big 8 for several days!

The Reed's took the boys and me to Johnny Rockets that night. It's sort of turned into a birthday tradition. They love that place! Anna and Lilla joined us too, so that was extra fun!

 Joel got home the next day, so we celebrated that night again with more gifts, open house at school, pizza, and cake!

 This is a little hard to read, but one of my favorites from open house! I love the little picture too!

 The birthday boy requested strawberry cake! I'm glad he doesn't care a lick about it being pink...he wanted what he wanted!

 

Happy Birthday sweet Hudson! We are so proud of the big boy you are becoming!!!

Stone Mountain Weekend

Hudson decided this year for his birthday that he wanted to go somewhere as a family instead of having a party. I love it when he makes these decisions! :) We could not go far because I couldn't miss too much work and Joel had to leave to drive to Virginia from wherever we went that weekend, so we decided that Stone Mountain right outside of Atlanta would be a fun little weekend getaway.

 

We got over there Friday afternoon and went straight to Snow Mountain. This was so fun! We had 2 hours to go tubing as much as we wanted. It was not crowded at all, so honestly we did not make it the full 2 hours. Our buddies were there too and enjoyed Snow Mountain with us!

 

 I thought this was a neat view riding up the incline to the top of the snow mountain.

 They also had a little snow area where the kids could play in the snow. I was prepared for this and brought the kids gloves, however, they got left in the car. Fail. It did not stop the kids though! Their hands were blue when we left!

It was actually pretty remarkable to me that they were able to keep the snow frozen. On that particular day, it was 70 degrees and sunny outside!

 We checked into our hotel, the Marriott at Stone Mountain, later that evening and the boys immediately wanted to go swimming. By the way, this hotel was awesome! Our kids get pretty pumped about staying in hotels in general, and the fact that this one had an outdoor AND an indoor pool blew their minds! Ha! The outdoor pool was NOT heated by the way. We have crazies on our hands!

It was so pretty that night!

While the kids were swimming, Joel and I were sipping on cocktails by the fire pit trying to stay warm!

It was supposed to rain for a few hours the next day, so we got up and went on a quick little hike before the rain got there.

It started raining as we finished, so we went back to our hotel because the kids wanted to try out the indoor pool this time. It ended up working out perfectly. The boys swam while it rained and then we grabbed lunch at the golf course at Stone Mountain, and by the time we finished, the sun was starting to come out. We headed to hike up to the top of Stone Mountain.

This hike was tough. I think it's only a mile or so up to the top, but since it had rained, it was super slippery. People were busting all over the place. We had to be extremely careful.

I'm not going to lie, the last little bit is straight up and it was hard! This is Harrison and I taking a break. We weren't even to the real top yet!

We finally made it!

It was a fun hike for sure. I was proud of little Harrison for making it. Going down was a lot easier though!

After the hike, we headed to see a little 3D Yogi Bear movie. It was really cute! The boys loved it.

Then we went and played mini golf!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the park. This was a really neat water wheel!

The boys swam yet again that night. I think they spent a little more time in the hot tub because it was literally freezing, but they weren't the only crazy ones out there. We ordered a pizza from the hotel restaurant and watched a movie. The boys were exhausted! We had a fun day.

The next morning we ate a big breakfast and then headed to take the Sky Ride up the top of Stone Mountain. It was neat getting to the top this way! I'm glad we hiked up too though. This was the view looking down on Snow Mountain.

After spending a little bit at the top, we headed back down, said our goodbyes to Joel for 2 weeks, let the boys go buy something, and then started our drive back to Birmingham. It was such a fun little getaway weekend!