Strawberry Picking Fun

At the end of April, Mikayla had a teacher workday, so we decided to drive out to Athens and spend some time with my sister and nephew.   There is a local farm near her that grows strawberries and they were in season, so we decided that would be a fun activity for the kids. 

Our attempts to get some pictures of the kids at the farm prior to going out and picking some strawberries.  

The farm uses a system with these pink flags to mark where the strawberries have been picked.  You go down to a pink flag, pick it up, start picking strawberries down the row, and then place the flag at the end spot where you stopped picking.  The kids had a LOT of fun with these.

Mikayla quickly turned into an expert berry picker.  She was very good at picking out ones that were perfectly ripe and picking them from the plant without demolishing them.

Gavin, on the other hand, was not as enthusiastic about picking the strawberries, at first.  He did eventually come around though.

Mikayla and Gavin ended up working very well together to fill their bucket.

Ah, the fruits of our labors! (And I mean labor!!!  It is not that easy to bend down and lean over to pick strawberries when you are 7 months pregnant!)

As we were leaving, the kids spotted this tractor and begged to sit on it.  Emily and I thought it was a good photo opportunity, so of course, we let them. 

After baking in the sun, we decided to go swimming.  Thankfully, Emily’s complex opened their pool pretty early.  I don’t think I have ever been swimming in Georgia during the month of April.   The kids were super excited! It was a perfect ending to a very fun day.

This is a small picture of what 10 pounds of strawberries look like all washed and hulled and ready to be used in lots of recipes.  I spent all week using these things!  We made freezer jam, strawberry syrup, strawberry bread, and strawberry leather (which was a total flop!).  We still had plenty of strawberries left to just snack on, too.  It’s amazing the difference in taste in freshly picked berries – they were just delicious!

We had such a great time doing this.  It is something that we will definitely have to make an annual trip of.

Easter fun!

We had a nice Easter weekend several weeks ago.  It was a little out of the ordinary, because I had to work on Easter Sunday, but it was a nice weekend, nonetheless.

On Saturday, we went to my parents house for an egg hunt, dinner and some Easter fun.  It was so nice to be able to spend time with everyone.

The kids had a blast hunting for eggs this year.  Mikayla was real good about letting her younger brother and cousin have plenty of eggs to find.  She had fun showing them where they could find some. 

After dinner, we let the kids dye some Easter Eggs.  This is a picture of Mikayla dying an Easter Egg blue.   What I don’t have a picture of, is her accidentally spilling that blue dye all over the place.  

Mikayla’s leg was dyed blue and well as the bar stool she was sitting on.  Thankfully, it came off of my mother’s hardwood floors.  Mikayla’s leg returned back to normal after about two good scrubbings in the shower.  The bar stool, however, is still tinted blue.  I’m glad Mom was thinking of repainting them sometime soon anyways!

Our Eater eggs…notice there is one lonely little blue egg.

On Easter morning,  the kids had fun opening there Easter baskets and playing with some of their goodies.   We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and spent about an hour together before I had to get ready and leave for work.  Mikayla was a little bummed that I was leaving, but I explained to her that unfortunately, kids still get sick and hurt on holidays and someone had to be at the hospital to take care of them.  I told her that all the nurses took turns working on holidays and this year, it was my turn. She seemed okay with this.

After I left, Jeremy got the kids ready and they went to my in-laws house to have another egg hunt and an Easter lunch.  I am so grateful that we have so much family close by to celebrate these holidays with.  It made me not being with them a little easier, because I knew they were still with family and having a wonderful day. 

My sassy little girl

Okay, I know I still need to blog about Easter, Mother’s Day and some other fun adventures, but I just have to intercept with something fun that happened today.

I have a sassy little girl.  You may think I am talking about Mikayla ( I very easily could be, goodness knows she is one sassy girl!), but no, I am talking about the little girl that is growing inside of me. 

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.  I will be 32 weeks tomorrow and am scheduled to have a c-section on June 30th at 7:15am.   I’m at the point where my appointments take all of about ten minutes.  When they were checking her heartbeat they noted that it was only about 115 beats/minute.  Normal is 120-160.  I had an early appointment (she is definitely less active in the morning) and I had not eaten breakfast yet.  My doctor was pretty sure this was the reason for the low heart rate, but just to be sure I had an impromptu non-stress test. 

When they put the fetal heart monitor on, well lets say the baby did NOT like it!  She has never been a fan of the doppler, so I was not surprised.  It was pretty funny to watch and feel though.  She was literally kicking the monitor and trying to move away from it.  The nurse and I were laughing.  I had to push a little button every time she moved, and I think I was pushing it about every 30 seconds.  Needless to say she woke up, perked up and had a heartbeat of 130 with good accelerations.  While I wasn’t super concerned, it was nice to have the reassurance.

I have to say how good Gavin was through all of this.  He doesn’t come to a lot of my appointments, but as luck would have it, he was with me on the very prolonged appointment.  Other than my iPod for entertainment, I was not prepared to be there for more than about 20 minutes.  Thankfully, when the nurse got me some apple juice and a NutriGrain bar she also got Gavin some Goldfish crackers.  Gavin was a little concerned at first when they hooked up the monitor, but I assured him that nothing hurt.  He really enjoyed listening to his baby sister.  He kept saying “She’s loud!” (you could hear the kicks very well over the monitor since she was giving it some direct kicks).  He also climbed up on the table and would lean down and kiss my belly.  Such a sweet boy! 

I love to see the Temple….

For those of you that may not know, we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  As a church community, we have had a special opportunity these past couple of weeks.  The Atlanta Temple closed its doors just a little less than two years ago for renovations.  Well they have finished them and the temple opened its doors to the public prior to its dedication this coming Sunday. 

Jeremy and I have crazy schedules, but we were glad to be able to find one night last week that we could take the children down to walk through the temple.  It was absolutely magnificent inside.   I was so grateful for the opportunity we had to do this tour as a family.

This is a pic of the front of the temple just before we went inside. 

My dad to this picture of us after the tour.  We didn’t expect to see him there, so that was a special treat for us.  The kids were so happy for a surprise visit with Papa!

My sweet little children….I can’t wait until there is another little girl in that picture with them!

Circus Day Fun

Gavin’s preschool held their annual Circus Day.  This was Gavin’s first one, and he was so excited to go!

Their “admission” to the circus is a costume.  Does he not make a cute little Woody??

I think his favorite part was the pony ride – very fitting for my little cowboy.

The bounce house was also a hit!

They had tons of games that Gavin had a lot of fun with.  He got prizes with each one and left with a bag full of treats and trinkets. 

Jeremy and I had so much fun getting to hang out with our little man.  He is getting so big!  I just love watching him play and listening to him talk.  He says that funniest things these days.  It was a fun morning!

Ikea trip

I needed to make a trip to Ikea to get some furniture pieces for the house.  The kids had been wanting to go down so I thought we would make an outing of it.

We first started with some lunch at the Café.  We were excited that it was Kids Eat Free weekend – nice little bonus!

 

Ikea has a Kids Club where you can drop off the kids for 45 minutes while you shop.  Gavin and Mikayla thoroughly enjoyed themselves there – I enjoyed getting to look around the showroom and pick out my items without my little helpers.

This is a pic of the kids sitting on the dresser and dining room chairs that we bought.  The were super patient while we waited in line.

I decided that their excellent behavior deserved $1 frozen yogurt cones.  We also treated ourselves to a tray of their super yummy cinnamon rolls (we ate those over a couple of days once we got home). 

It was a fun day together and a nice way to close out Mikayla’s Spring Break.  I loved having the opportunity to spend some extra time with both of my children.  With Mikayla in school now, I miss some of the time with her that we used to spend together.  It was a good week!

Spring Break at the Zoo

Pay attention to the title because you will never see that combination of words on this blog again!  While Mikayla was on Spring Break, Jeremy took a couple of days off so that we could have some good family fun together.   We decided a day at the zoo would be a lot of fun.  We had great weather, so it seemed like a good plan.  Now, we knew it would be busier than we were used to, but we were totally unprepared for how busy it truly would be.  When we got there, we quickly realized there was NO parking at the zoo, so we parked about a half mile (maybe more) away and then walked through Grant Park to get to the zoo.  Thankfully we had pre-purchased our tickets so we didn’t have to stand in the crazy long line to get inside the park.  After we got in, there were people EVERYWHERE.  So one would think we wouldn’t have enjoyed ourselves.  However, we had a great time.  The kids were so well-behaved and listened beautifully.  The animals were out everywhere and the kids really enjoyed seeing them.  Despite the crazy crowds, we had a really nice time together as a family. 

Spring Time fun

Playing catch up…again!  We have been having a good bit of fun which I guess has not left a lot of time for blogging. 

We have had a beautiful spring here in the south.  The temperature has just been perfect!  The kids are outside almost every afternoon.  We have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. (as you can see!)