Strawberries!

Yesterday, Mama, Clay, and Molly Elizabeth decided to go pick strawberries at a local u-pick farm just up the road. All of our cars were in use somewhere else, so that only left us the stick-shift, yard truck bumping down the dirt roads. We really felt like hicks from the sticks with the three of us crammed into the small cab, but it was fun! Clay drove us there so that he could practice driving the stick shift. I must say, he's a very good driver; we only stalled out twice.

The day was warm and the strawberry field was beautiful and green. There was no one else there except a man working in the field. We each took a row and within just a few minutes our baskets were overflowing with beautiful berries. The hardest part of picking things you love is knowing when to stop. We try to be finished, but, as we leave the field, it is so hard not to notice berries that are just begging to be put in our baskets and taken home with us! It didn't take long to pick three baskets full of beautiful, red, ripe strawberries. What a fun little excursion!

Those beautiful strawberries reminded us of a favorite children's book, The Big Hungry Bear, that we all loved as children. Benjamin read it MANY times to my cousins last week and Evan,who is three, had it memorized by the end of the week and was "reading" it to himself.

"Hello, little mouse. What are you doing?

Are you going to pick that red, ripe strawberry?

Don't you know the big hungry bear loves red, ripe strawberries?

Especially ones that have just been picked!"

Those strawberries are so delicious that we will probably have to pick every few days. In the last 12 hours our family has eaten over half of them....!