Strawberry Picking

The days are feeling long to me right now. I had big plans to schedule regular outings for the summer, so I wouldn't feel this way (and in fact I have a post half-written, dedicated to that very subject, which may or may not ever get finished), but the exhaustion of first trimester has me limping along in survival mode instead. I find myself in a mental cycle:

Morning, day 1: We should do something fun tomorrow instead of staying around the house all day.

Afternoon, day 1: I spend all of nap time researching fun things to do around town.

Evening, day 1: I'm exhausted. It's too hard to take three children anywhere. Plus Silas might need a nap. Forget it, we're not going anywhere.

Morning, day 2: We should do something fun . . .

And so it is that I went back and forth on whether to go strawberry picking for days, until this morning Isaac finally said, "oh, just go. You'll have fun. I'll stick around to help you get out the door." Perhaps that was the motivation I needed -- getting out the door before 9am is the hardest part, of course, and we do always have fun once that part is over. By 8:30am we were all packed up and headed out to Blooms and Berries in Loveland.

Waiting patiently in the field while I ran back to the car to grab the camera, staying just where they were told to stay. They're good kids. :)

Heading out to the strawberry patch. 

Owen was incredibly diligent about picking only the ripest strawberries, considerably more so than Levi. He was one determined little man this morning, crouching along the strawberry plants, filling his own little bucket (after having demanded his own little bucket to carry, of course). 

Strawberry!

Owen's haul.

Levi's and my haul.

It drizzled most of the time we were there, but nobody seemed to mind except Silas (who was on my back in the ergo). The rain began in earnest as we pulled out of the parking lot, and positively poured all the way home. So thanks, God, for that great bit of mercy in holding it off for us!

Trekking back across the field to pay. Levi gave up on carrying the box pretty quickly.

As we drove there, I wished I had planned some other things to do in Loveland while we were there, since it's a very cute little place. But since it ended up raining like mad, it was better just to go home anyway. 

The final total: nearly 3 pounds!

Bonus: I have a little bit of Cool Whip leftover from a youth group dessert I made on Tuesday, so I got a very pleasant afternoon snack out of the deal. :)