The sweetness of summer

It's funny. I was looking at a magazine at the dentist's office yesterday and they had an article about making pickles with your kids.

And it looked so nice.

Nicely dressed kids in a beautiful kitchen. Great photos. What a potentially great experience for us to share together as a family.

That's the funny part.

In my family, it wouldn't be like that.

First of all, I wouldn't want my kids' nice clothes to get dirty/wrecked in the process. Second of all, while I have a nice kitchen, it gets pretty messy when we attempt something like this together.

And I just know there would be arguments.

That said, though, I think I'd still like to try it. And I'd take some pictures of course, but they wouldn't be as nice as the article, I don't think...

So, last night, we started with something that we know..... strawberry picking. We've been doing this together since Austin was fourteen months old. (And he's a lot more helpful now, which is a huge plus!)

We went to Hamm's Orchard last night with my friend Darlene and her kids, Michael and Lauren. And between the seven of us, we picked 12 ice cream pails full of nice large berries in a little more than 30 minutes! It was amazing!









So, this morning, we cleaned up the berries. Jonah and Sage were very helpful at taking the hulled berries from the bowl and putting them in plastics freezer bags. Austin got in on the action when it was time to crush the berries to make the jam.

And here is the fruit of our labours, so to speak:



Yum!