Sweet, Sticky, Summery Smiles

I am spending boat loads of time gearing up for the road trip to KC. This means I am ape shit busy sorting, washing, folding, packing and hunting down laundry times 6- I am responsible for making sure Jeff and all the kids and I have everything we could possibly need to wear. Plus swimwear, plus some cold weather gear in case** the freak show ends up driving into Denver and Vail. I am whirling around the house gathering and making piles, lists, and stackslike this small sample as shown on the kitchen table. I have purchased enough individually wrapped snacks to get us to California and back, but that is another post all together. These kinds of trips are not vacations they are merely a change of scenery. Taking all our people on the road is more work than staying home, so if anyone DARES to call my trip to Kansas City a summer vacation I will promptly rip them a new one. Capice?

In order to keep the kids from going stir crazy while I am packing up everything we own, I have to get them out of the house and exhaust them. It takes a good two hours to wear them out to the point of napping, so today, I took them to Dorans fruit farm in New Albany.

My migrant workers invaded the strawberry fields and quickly discovered that this farm is not as well maintained as Jacquemien farms in Plain City. Although there were berries to be found, there were a ton of weeds and the berries just weren't as easily accessible. My kids have become strawberry snobs. They kept saying that the "other" farm was better. They have opinions these days and are not at all shy about stating how they feel.

I watched as they enjoyed eating the berries. I kept encouraging them to put some strawberries in the baskets but they kept on consuming more than they were saving. Eli told me they were too juicy to put in the basket. CJ was covered in sticky strawberry juice after the first 45 seconds of picking.



Charlotte and Natalie worked the hardest to gather our little harvest


I think it is a nature and nuturing girl thing. We have a nice collection of a variety of strawberries to eat along I-70 now.

We got to ride the big tractor with the trailer out into the fields and back again. When you are a city kid, this is better than a roller coaster because it is different and new.



The kids willingly climbed aboard and giggled over every bump along the way.

We came home with stained clothing, sticky fingers, a quart of fresh fruit and plenty of great photoslike this classic. Thankfully the trip to the farm worked. They are all napping as I type and download the images of our sweet strawberry summer smiles. Let the packing continue!


*** Jeff may have a meeting in Denver and if by chance we can continue the road trip out West, we will. Don't worry you all can come along to join our Grisswold family fiesta. Wooo Hoo.