A BERRY Good Birthday

I had a great 36th Birthday this last Saturday. One of the best I can remember. We started off by taking the kids to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries. They were in heaven.




They put as many in their mouths as they did in their buckets. But you won't be surprised to hear who ate the most strawberries of all...



We went with our friends, the Towers, who had more skilled laborers than we did, so their bounty was much more impressive. We always have fun with this great family. (Plus their girls love London so much and she loves them that I always get a nice break :)

But the end goal here was to just have a good time.

And that is exactly what happened.


Then we headed up the road to a blueberry farm and picked buckets of blueberries. In the store blueberries cost like $4 for a small plastic container. We got each bucket we picked for $6. I felt like we were robbing the place! I ran out with my bag not looking back fearing they would realize what they just charged me! We decided that blueberry picking might just become a weekly event. I can eat them like a snack and they're much better on the waistline than most of the other snacks I enjoy. I've also heard they help your body fight off cancers. After the amount of blueberries London ate, she will probably never have cancer!

Then we took the family to the local fish hatchery where they just happened to be giving out free fishing poles that day so each of the boys got their own brand new fishing pole! Drake was the only one who caught anything and it was Brad's thumb, which was holding his cell phone, which slipped into the murky pond... bye bye phone!

After we got home we BBQ'd some hot dogs and went swimming in the pool. This is a great addition to the home and I can tell a lot of hours will be spent in this relaxing and cooling retreat. Brad and the boys got me a tennis raquet and some tennis balls because since moving to Florida I have wanted to learn how to play. Then I really wanted to learn how to plan when a couple weeks ago they finished this HUGE tennis complex in our neighborhood. So Brad gets the Husband of the Year award for a perfect gift.

We started making some strawberry jam, strawberry lemonade, fruit salad, homemade strawberry ice cream, and freezing any leftover fruit for use later. I also finished making my birthday cake and the boys were anxious to eat it so we got right to it. Rhett was a little concerned that there were only three candles on the cake. "You're not 3 years old!" I explained to him that you get to a point in life that there are too many candles to fit on the cake. That didn't work for him because he had the answer, "Then just make a bigger cake!"


Not much later the babysitter arrived and Brad and I were off to dinner and a movie. (The first time we had done that type of date in years.) The Towers came with us again, just in case they hadn't had enough of us that morning. We went to a nice seafood restaurant and then to see Star Trek. I was really excited to see this since my family used to watch Star Trek together religiously. We all really liked it. Bones was my favorite recreation :)

So did I mention it was a perfect Birthday?