Berry Picking

Last week, a friend texted me about going berry picking one afternoon with the littles. 

At the beginning of the summer, I would have been all for it. One might even go so far as to say I was rarin' to go.  And then this summer kicked into high gear like a runaway Harley, 
leaving me hanging onto the tailpipe for dear life. 

So, I had serious doubts as to my energy level and general emotional state going into something that was sure to be a hot, crowded ordeal involving tears, fights, dipping into the college fund for concession-stand snacks and souvenirs, and ending with me curled in the fetal position under a blackberry bush somewhere. 

This adventure was none of those things. 
 In fact, it was EXACTLY the opposite type of experience
 I have come to expect from summer outings. 

We drove out to a little farm in Lebanon called Circle S Farms on an overcast afternoon.  Only one other parking spot was occupied in the gravel lot, and we got out and 

followed a sign that said, "Start Here." 

This sign says, "Hey, Y'all!"  Well, "Hey!" yourself

Why can't they ever look at the camera?  Why?!

The place was blessedly quiet, and unsettlingly peaceful.  Not a soul besides ourselves was in sight, and I got more than a little nervous about not having the safety of a herd to follow or a line to wait in.  The place is totally self-serve, so we popped our money in the lock box and chose our containers.  Some of us got a little overzealous and went for the big baskets with handles, but, when reminded that, "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit," it was all good.

Armed with our equipment/baskets, we descended on the berry bushes like locusts.  

Really slow-moving, make-your-mom-do-all-the-work locusts. 

The kids had a good time determining the readiness of the berries for picking 

as they sampled the product along the way.

Good thing we didn't go for the jumbo basket.

Teamwork and show tunes made the work go quicker.

Just kidding. 

 I wish there had been show tunes...

Just a boy and the dog that owned the farm.

The kids chased a sweet little beagle-girl around the farm for awhile and named her Jewel. 

Then, it was time for some fossil-digging in this most awesome of sandboxes.

Then we did some see-sawing...

...and cattle-roping.

Almost got him!
 
We had such fun, we're already planning another trip out there.  

With this kind of haul, we were excited to figure out what we could make with all of that gorgeous fruit.  Sarah suggested a pie, but I don't bake unless you want something the consistency and flavor profile of a charcoal briquette. 

We decided on cobbler, because it's pretty hard to burn cobbler.  

Not impossible, but pretty hard.  

Because I'm lazy and I thought of a cool name for it, 

I just lumped all of the blueberries and blackberries together in the same dish.  

Without further ado, I give you...

Black and Blue Cobbler
  
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 2 cups fresh blueberries and blackberries
• 1 cup of milk

1. Grease a 9 x 9 baking dish and set aside.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt the butter.
3. Mix the flour and sugar together thoroughly.  
4. Pour the milk and butter in your sugar/flour mixture and stir it up.
5. Rinse and drain your berries, then dump them in a bowl.  Sprinkle a few tablespoons of sugar over the berries and mix it all in. 
6. Pour the batter mixture into the baking dish, and then pour the berries and sugar on top. 
7. Bake for an hour (or so) and enjoy the yummy smells while you read a romance novel.
8. After it's all goldeny and gooey, take that bad boy out and pat yourself on the back for not burning it. 

This is why you HAVE to use self-rising flour.  Not very cobbler-looking, but it eats just as good. 

Firefly Relocation Program and a Bug Jar How-To

Here at the HOB, we have an outreach program for bugs, special sticks, and even pet rocks.  Normally, we keep the good work we do to ourselves, quietly providing meals, shelter, and, for the bugs, a crushing blow to the exoskeleton. 

We are committed to keeping these little balls of light as pets...

...whether they like it or not.

 Armed with nets and spaghetti jars, we take extra-long naps to make sure we're alert and ready to transport the unwitting and unwilling little buggers
 to their new temporary homes.  

In our home.

Yes, we love a bug hunt around here. 

But what we love most about  lightning bugs is their glowing hind-ends.  
Normally we clean out a spaghetti jar and catch away, 
but for Sarah's party, I wanted to do something special. 

I also wanted to give the bugs a break and the kids an incentive to release their prey.  

So, about 2 days before the big hunt, I got 6 mason jars from Dollar Tree, 
some glow paint, and some Q-tips and went to work.

Step 1:  Just load a Q-tip with some glow paint and dab little ovals at random 

            all over the inside of the jar.

Let it dry, and apply at least 2 more coats.  
*I didn't do this, but it might work better if you get some neon yellow or green paint and do the first coat in neon, and the subsequent coats in glow paint.

Step 2:  Use a Sharpie to draw wings and antennae on your cute little guys on the 

            outside of the jar.

Step 3:  (Optional) Go on a firefly hunt!

 Step 4:  "Charge" the glow paint under a lamp, turn off the lights, and enjoy 

              the glow of your very own little lightning bugs!               

I couldn't get a picture of the jars lit up in all of their buggy glory, but, trust me, it works.

Happy Monday!

  

Birthday Bug Hunt

Birthdays are a big deal around here (duh).  Certain people of the under-4-feet set spend the entire year dreaming about their birthdays: the gifts, the friends, the venue, and the cake.  Invites to these exclusive affairs are hard to come by, and, depending on your status with the birthday person, you may or may not score one for the big day. 

I've personally been uninvited to a certain individual's party

 at least 1,687 times just this year.  

This summer, Mike and I talked about scaling back on birthdays and moving toward doing the friends birthday party thing every other year, like a wise friend of ours does. 

 It makes sense to birthday-shunning grownups, but how do you explain that to the younger set?  Speaking from personal experience, it doesn't go over well.  

We knew we couldn't go cold turkey, so we limited our guest list to neighbors.  In all, there were 4 children besides my own, and Sarah was happy as a clam.

Since March, Sarah has been talking about camping out in the backyard, and I promised her we could do it on her birthday.  Add to that the anticipation of lovely weather and a plethora of lightning bugs, and we decided to do a bug hunt with some neighbors as well.

Mind you, we decided to roll all this birthday and bug hunt business together 5 days before the day of the fete.  So, how do you throw a last-minute party to satisfy a newly-minted 5-year-old? 

Let the kids stay up late.

Seriously.

We had four neighbor kids, their parents, ourselves, and a handful of balloons, and the birthday girl couldn't have been happier. 

I think that's one of Sarah's gifts: she makes the most of any party.  As long as you have Cheetos, cake, balloons, and junk  favors to send home with her friends, it's all good. 


Here's a rundown on the details:

Decor

You're lookin' at it.

Food

Cheetos, juice boxes, watermelon, and s'mores.

The birthday "cake" was dirt cake, in individual cups for each guest.

I wanted Sarah to pick out a cute little flower pot to serve her dirt cake in, but, in a fit of contrariness, she chose a flower pot that looked like a tea cup and saucer.     

Gummy worms and lollipop flowers just seemed a natural fit for a bug hunt birthday.

These dirt cakes are so rich, nobody could eat very much of them, and nobody ate the worms.  But, since it was International Mud Day on Saturday, they fit perfectly.

Games and Activities

The real hit of the evening was the s'mores-making over a real fire pit that 
our sweet neighbors kindly hosted especially for the birthday girl.

I don't have any pictures of the marshmallow roasting because
I take the "keeping kids alive" part of my job pretty seriously.  

We had nets on hand for each guest, as well as bug jars for holding the little fellas.

You can't really see it due to my mad photography skills and positioning clear jars on a marble table, but I painted little lightning bugs on there with glow paint so 

we could leave the real bugs out in the wild while still enjoying the glow of their little lights.

Once it got all purply and dusky outside, we spotted the first victim firefly, and it was ON!

Sharing bugs

It is REALLY hard to take decent pictures and hold 2 jars and a net at the same time. 

After (temporarily) depopulating the neighborhood of sweet lil' lightning bugs, 

we moved on to glow necklaces and bracelets. 

I like to think of these as hunting trophies.  

Kind of like a 21st-century version of the necklace made of shrunken heads or boar's teeth.

We also made little lightning bugs out of battery-operated tea lights, plastic Easter eggs, and pipe cleaners.  These were so easy and they mollified our blood-thirsty hunters for an hour until their innocent prey emerged for the hunt.

Smiling buggy face

Glowing buggy hind-end

 We topped off the night with some local camping.  

In our den.  

The original plan was to sleep outside, but Sarah graciously offered to compromise 

and "camp in" instead. 

 So much fun and so little work.  

I'm pretty sure we just started an annual summer tradition.

 

Flat Sarah and Will 2-D

I'm putting my kids in the mail and sending them to their grandparents. 
 "If it fits, it ships," right?

Just joshing.

Sort of...

See, even though we just saw almost all of Mike's immediate family a few weeks ago (here and here), we won't be able to be with them for a huge family event coming up in the next few weeks: Uncle Dan and Aunt Chrislyn's wedding in the Philippines.  

During our recent visit to Florida, we were joking about sending life-sized cardboard standees of ourselves so we could be in on the wedding fun.  

Here's the thing: there's nothing our kids like better than seeing themselves in pictures.  Plus, at their ages, the concepts of other countries and distance and the world are nebulous at best.  What better way to give them perspective (and feed their egos) than to let their little mailable selves have an adventure!

Even though we can't make ourselves into cardboard, we can "Flat Stanley" the kids. 

So, I took a bunch of full-length pictures of the kids...

...printed them out, and laminated them.  

While we were waiting for the laminating, I asked them what they thought about being mailed to another country.  Their saucer-eyes said it all.  

Sarah was game, but she couldn't hide her trepidation about fitting in the envelope.  
Will got a little defensive when I suggested looking
 around Staples for a box big enough to fit both of them. 

Anyway, after we laminated them,
 I cut around the image of their bodies and stuck them in the mail to Nana.  

Our hope is that the relatives will have some fun with these little guys 
and we can get in on the celebration

 even though we can't be there in person.
 Now, I just need a globe and some great stories from the big adventure.

They really started to warm up to the idea of being mailed to another part of the world...

As you can see, we can't wait!

Sun Tea

Sun tea. Don't you just love the way that sounds?

To me, it sums up summer.

My tea-drinking ways come from my mom.  Hot or iced, sweet or not, it's our comfort food. I've passed the tea-gene on to Will, whose feelings about sweet tea run as deep and strong as the orange pekoe he adores.  

Sarah prefers to serve lemonade at her tea parties.  That one is destined to be a coffee-drinker on down the road.

I remember my mom making sun tea once or twice when I was younger, during the dog days of a Memphis summer.  The name made me think that there was some sort of magic going on, like it could only be made at high noon on the summer solstice or something. 

Twenty-five years later, a cloudless 90-degree day (the first day of summer, actually), I decided to try it for myself. 

So I gathered my materials: 

• Glass pitcher
•  7 tea bags (nothing fancy, just plain old Lipton)
• water
• Saran wrap
• Sun

*I saw online that the ratio of teabags to water should be about 2:1 ratio of ounces of water to grams of tea, but, seriously, who's going to do all that measuring?
 
And filled the pitcher with water.  I stuck the teabags in, covered the top of the pitcher with plastic (no Saran wrap here, so I had to use a cut-open Ziploc and a rubber band), and set it out to let the sun work its magic for about 4 hours. 

Here's what it looked like when I first set the pitcher out to brew:

Even my future-coffee-drinker got caught up in the idea a little and we talked about how the sun was going to be our heat source, instead of our teakettle.

By dinnertime, we were ready to sample our concoction: 

More delicate than traditionally-brewed tea, the sun tea appealed to some of us more than others.  Sarah enjoyed her glass immensely, while Will took a sip and handed it back with a grimace.  I was somewhere in between, since I like my tea on the strong side, too. 

I think I'll try mixing in some fruit or lemonade next time.  

Any way you dress it up or pour it, the official drink of summer rarely disappoints.

Happy Sunday!

Disney Domination

Hey, did any of you know that Disney World is a race?

Me neither.  But, apparently it's on the Y chromosome to attack Disney World at a flat-out sprint, leaving your wife and short-legged children far behind in your single-minded effort to ride on EVERY SINGLE RIDE as fast as possible.  I'm getting Mike a shirt that says,
 "I Won Disney and All I Got Was This Stupid T-shirt."  

Seriously, though, we got to the Magic Kingdom at 8:00 a.m., 

didn't leave until 8:00 pm, and never once had a stroller.  

Hardcore.

Like I said, we got to the park at 8:00, so that meant catching the bus over there at 7:00.

Will is not my morning person, can you tell? 

I was trying to get a shot of their reaction to seeing Cinderella's Castle, but these seasoned travelers were only mildly impressed.

And we were on our way!

Mike hadn't started sprinting yet, so I could take pictures instead of huffing 

and puffing to keep up.

Even though we'd promised to hit the teacups first thing, we stopped at a few other rides along the way.  First up was the Ariel/Under the Sea ride, 

then the Barnstormer, and Dumbo. 

I think what makes Disney all happy and magical is not the cheesy, too-short rides or the sweaty, too-long lines.  Nope, it's the fact that I can remember being Sarah's age and riding Dumbo and the teacups. There's a picture of me at age 5 riding Dumbo with my dad(?), and checking out my brother stuck in the stocks.

My roller-coaster buddy was still waking up.

We discovered two things about our kids at the theme park: Sarah is a roller-coaster hound and Will is NOT.
 Between his aversion to chocolate and his nervousness about roller-coasters, I'm not quite sure if he's actually related to me.  But we're keeping him anyway.

TEACUPS!

Going into this, Mike and I were trying to keep expectations low and plans loose so the kids could go at their own pace (ha!) and do what they wanted to do and see what they wanted to see. We only planned to ride 4 key rides and see a character or something.

Consequently, by 10 am, we had checked almost everything off of our must-do list and needed to map out a new plan. 

The new plan included visiting Winnie the Pooh:

Rapunzel's Tower:

And one of Will's favorites, the rocket ships in Tomorrowland:

After all of that, we needed some vittles.  Others of us needed a nap.

Refreshed and rejuvenated, we headed back into the fray for more adventures.

Mike and I tried soooo hard to convince Sarah that this was the parade:

But she wasn't buying what we were selling.

Around this time, we finally experienced the miraculous invention called the FastPass.  Even though we'd heard of it before, we thought you had to pay extra to skip the line.  According to a Disney employee, "We don't charge extra.  This ain't Universal."  
Hurrah!

 

As the day wore on, we got a little braver with our ride choices, taking the munchkins on Pirates of the Caribbean (A/C, glorious A/C!),

And the Haunted Mansion.  

The enigma that is Will Brown had no problem with either of these kind of scary experiences, even though Goofy's mini-roller coaster had him clawing me for dear life.  Meanwhile the Sis and I were pretty jumpy and a little freaked out when the Haunted Mansion ride stopped 3 TIMES while we were on it. 

We put Daddy in the stocks for that.

Then, in a stunning lapse of judgement, bought ourselves some swords.

Rookie move, I tell ya.

The rest of the day was spent accidentally stabbing fellow tourists, smacking each other, and trying to find a place to stow the darn things on rides.

Here's the part where I sound old and crotchety.  
Since when did Disney characters hold press conferences?  
Back in the day, Mickey and his cronies came to the people, 
the people didn't go to them. 

Oh, well, I guess when you're a princess, you get to hold court.  So that's where we met up with Tiana.  And a seriously hardcore Disney family.  They thought we were kind of weird for only coming to the park one day.  

I thought the same about them coming back every year.  

Every. Year. 

We capped the day off with a drive around the race track.

I think this was Will's favorite because he got to combine impossibly slow driving with reckless driving.  It kind of made me homesick for Nashville drivers;)  

Mike couldn't figure out why I was so whiny and the kids were so tired 
until I told him it was 8 pm. 

So, yeah, we did one day of Disney.  And we were glad to keep it that way.  We had a great time and the kids were troopers, but you could not have convinced me to go back and do it all over again the next day.