Strawberries

Remember last year when I talked about planting strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.  We were hoping to get enough strawberries to make a few pies, some jam, and have some to freeze to eat throughout the year.  Well, we had NO clue what we were in for come June this year.  The last couple of months we have been weeding, picking, cleaning, freezing, and making jam like crazy!  We picked for a little over a week everyday.  Each day we would pick from 2 to 4 gallons of strawberries.  The silly part is that only half of our plants grew enough to produce berries.  We were a little worried we wouldn't have any, man were we wrong.

Of course Owen doesn't like the strawberries.  He doesn't mind a little jam, but strawberries no way!  Owen liked to help pick and weed.  He picked a lot of white ones and when he was "helping" to weed he pulled off some leaves too.  Oh well, it was fun having him help us.  We would throw he rotten ones or ones that had been chewed on by the deer or the dogs and Owen loved to mimick us. 

Ethan is going to start a new adventure with wine making this year.  Since we have SO many strawberries we thought we would try some strawberry wine. 

Now we have a break until raspberries come, blueberries take from 3 to 4 years to get any crop.

My little "Helper":

making some jam with gramda

stirring it up.....looks like he took a taste ;-)

helping grandma and grandpa with some landscaping

 picking strawberries

We celebrated grandpa Smith's birthday with a trip out to dinner.  Owen was actually pretty good this time.  Thankfully we ordered him some chocolate milk and that entertained him for atleast a half an hour ;-)

after dinner snuggle with grandpa

Adam's turn for a snuggle!

yummy strawberry pie for dessert!



Father's Day

We are blessed to have many great father's in our life, Owen is especially lucky to have Ethan as his Dad!

Our Father's Day was pretty mellow, Mommy unfortunately had to work/be on call, so Daddy's breakfast in bed wasn't going to happen....maybe next year sweetie!  I think Owen really enjoyed having Daddy all to himself though.

We made a late breakfast for Grandpa Larry and then went over to G&G Smith for a grill out with Great-Grandpa and the Herring girls.  It was a beautiful day, and thankfully the gnats stayed away today.

The boys after a friendly game of lawn darts.  Hunter and Grandpa beat everyone!

the Dad's

 Happy Father's Day Ethan

 Allways joking around ;-)

Grandpa and his girls

My wonderful dad, and Owen's "Bupa"

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