Blueberries!

I'm sure you know by now that I LOVE living in a place where we can pick our own berries...lots and lots of berries! And blueberries happen to be one of our favorite foods- especially for Eli. Last year we picked blueberries once and then we bought many boxes of frozen wild blueberries that we ate throughout the year (I believe we went through 7 or 8 large boxes and even that wasn't enough)! This year we found a nice little pick-your-own blueberry place only 20 minutes from our house!! And we visited there three times to pick berries! These pictures are from the first time we were there. Eli just couldn't have been happier...a whole field dripping with his favorite food...and he just wandered around picking and eating. And Lily...she went picking with us all three times (Eli only went the first time) and she did amazing- working hard to fill up her pink pail every time! She can be such a hard worker! But one of the funniest memories for me from the first time we went picking was that we forgot to bring Eli's diaper bag along...big mistake! Of course after about 20 minutes Eli had a messy diaper and there was just no way we could let him sit in it for the rest of picking and on the way home. So my AMAZING husband took it upon himself to figure out a solution (which I believe involved some dried out wipes he found in our van...I don't really want to know the details)! But there was absolutely no diaper to be found so we just had to let the little guy go commando. Ummm....check out the second picture...yes that's his very very white little bum sticking out of his shorts (which were way too big without a diaper to hold them up)!:) Thankfully we managed to finish picking and drive home without any accidents. We left with lots of blueberries and a renewed commitment to remember the diaper bag!:)

This World Can't Satisfy...

"What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy."

- Laura Story

Haircuts!

My little ones were a little overdue for haircuts so when we were in Wisconsin my mom took us to her salon and got us all haircuts (even me, though there aren't any pictures to prove it)!

I snapped these shots just a little bit before we went.

And Eli is clearly not thrilled about getting his haircut!

But I couldn't resist snapping a few shots (since I wasn't there for his first haircut)!

So, he wasn't thrilled, but he tolerated it and held still for the most part (the tootsie rolls helped too- notice the chocolate on his chin)! Truth be told I don't absolutely love his hair when it's first cut, but I do love it after it's grown for a week or two!

And as you can see Lily's hair was getting quite long and as beautiful as it was it was always getting in her face so we needed a change...

And oh my, if this isn't the cutest little bob (on the cutest little strawberry blond) in the whole world then I don't know what is!:)

The Milwaukee Zoo

When we were in Wisconsin recently we visited The Milwaukee Zoo. I have such fun memories of going to this zoo when I was younger so it was so much fun to take our kids there. They love animals and they loved this zoo (which is pretty easy- it's such a big, nice zoo with all kinds of animals)! Many of us agreed that watching the grizzy bears play (in the first picture) was a big highlight! Thanks Mom and Dad for a fun day at the zoo!

What our dog did the other day...

This is what our dog did the other day...

He tree'd a raccoon in our backyard.

Scratch that.

He tree'd a whole family of raccoons (if you look further up the tree in the 2nd picture you can see a mass of four raccoons all curled up together)!

Indy was out on his leash when I heard some intense commotion and saw him barking his head off at a little critter hanging upside down from a very small branch in our backyard. Oh my was I thankful to discover that the little critter was not a skunk (we've been there-twice) but a raccoon! And after Indy was inside I watched the raccoon run up the tree instead of down and that's when I saw the rest of the racoon family further up in the tree! And that's where they stayed for at least three hours (I'm certain they probably didn't come down until well after dark since when they tried to come down around dusk Indy scared them once again). Oh my are they cute (when they are high up in the tree and safely away from me and my family) but I know they are kinda nasty creatures and I'm thankful that thanks to our dog we probably won't be seeing them around here again soon!

The Strawberry Days of June

Once again we have thoroughly enjoyed berry picking season this summer! And these pictures from our first strawberry picking adventure back in June pretty much say it all: This was the year that Lily picked more strawberries than she ate (though she still ate plenty) and Eli just pretty much went around eating strawberries out of each of our containers (rather counter productive, but cute)- we did finally teach him how to pick them himself (every one went straight into his mouth, but at least it allowed us to get some picking done)!!

Just Like Big Sister

Eli really wants to be like his big sister...

He wants to do the things she does, play with the toys she has, and just generally copy much of what she is doing! And this, as you can see, includes riding bikes...oh my how badly he wants to be able to ride a bike! So much so that one afternoon at my parent's house he just went ahead and put her helmet on (backwards) and tried to take off all on his own (he didn't get very far)!:)