Pick-Your-Own Berry Day

Pick-Your-Own Berry Day - Theo Edition

Today is one my favorite summer traditions. Berry picking.

Ah, berry picking. It's kind of a big deal around here.

In the mornings when Meadow sleeps in I will bring Theo to her to get her to wake up. Today backfired because he fell back asleep.

Isn't this every parent's dream? Morning without kids. Yes, please.

Not when we have places to be.

Eventually we got on the road and headed to our usual berry picking spot. The Berry Patch. The blueberries bushes were pretty full; normally we don't go until the end of the month.

Soon Theo will be able to help too.

For now it's a three person job. I always get a little crabby picking berries. This is not a job I'd volunteer for.

It makes you appreciate the hard work that goes into the berries you buy at the store.

Meadow mostly picks and eats anyway.

After we got our bucketfull we headed to Marine On St. Croix for our picnic lunch.

Theo ate some mommy milk and we ate some supposedly healthy ramen.

Hey, Little Brother.

Marine on St. Croix is so quaint.

Our next stop is a new tradition: a brewery for a flight of beers.

I suggested Maple Island Brewing, which I'd photographed for Discover Stillwater last summer.

Meadow got a root beer and we all picked up some popcorn.

They gave Meadow her root beer in a beer glass. She thought it was pretty cool.

Hey photo bomber.

Ommmmmm...

Next stop: swim time in Hudson.

We found Meadow's old floatie, but it has a hole in it.

It worked for parts of the time.

For a few minutes and not much longer.

Hey, it's a beached whale...wait, that's just me in the water.

Meadow has gotten braver in the water this year. She's finally comfortable with not touching the ground as long as she has a life jacket on. We're still working on getting her face wet. Theo on the other-hand loves the water and feeling the squishy sand.

We'll see how brave he is next summer.

Meadow never wants to leave.

We'd probably have stayed longer, but we had excessive ice cream to eat.

This year we went to the St Paul location of Nelson's. It was just as crazy as its Stillwater counterpart.

Meadow had to use the bathroom right as we were about to order. I was stuck holding two giant melting ice creams for what felt like forever.

Brooke's not the best at dealing with melting ice cream with a baby in a crowd. Soon enough we were back and chomping down our ice cream.

Nelson's is fun and all, but it's really just massive portions of Kemp's ice cream.

We ended our night at home hungry for a real meal. Meadow instead ate a cucumber. She loves cucumbers.

Comments

Backcountry Camping with Kids in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Day 1 Back in May I stumbled upon Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I had no idea there was a National Park in North Dakota and that it was the northern end of the Badlands. Usually our summer vacations coincide with Scott's work trips. Since he didn't have any this summer I thought we should take advantage of actually taking a vacation. What, my workcations are always classics? I suppose a second real vacation this year wouldn't hurt. We definitely have more time than normal. As long as we took Covid-19 precautions and avoided people. We finally settled on a time to go. Blake joined us so we borrowed our dad's van so we could ride together. Scott had just driven from Michigan the day before. Blake had met my parents in Wisconsin to get the van and then drove from Duluth to pick us up. I offered to drive since I literally only drive twice a month. I was still pretty tired from a long drive home. Since we were near Fergus Falls we had to stop by the abandoned state ho...

A Park Rapids-Walker Workcation

We were going to just go overnight on Saturday with Scott for a work trip. With a snowstorm in the forecast we left right after the kids were done with school. Meadow is still chugging away at her rug hooking. We stopped at the China Star buffet near St Cloud. They really upgraded the interior since we were here last. Don't worry about me. Just noshing on the green beans. Can a guy get more veggies in these buffets? We ended up changing hotels and staying in Walker at the... Walker Hotel . The room was a bit old fashioned and TV a wee one. But the pool had a slide, so that's a win. Right? The falling snow outside the pool window made it slightly magical. Meadow got Theo's hair dry after we got ready to take a drive down to Park Rapids. It doesn't look that bad, but it was nerve wrecking driving. But I do have to say that the Escape PHEV did pretty well in the conditions. The slippery mode for snow and rain kind of rules even if we don't have 4WD. We tagged alon...

Brooke's Birthday Fish Fry and Many Minneapolis Walks

My actual birthday happened to be on the first Friday of Lent. You know what that means, church fish fry! One of our favorites is at St Albert the Great in south Minneapolis. Usually we have to wait for a little while up in the sanctuary, but we got downstairs to the hall super quick. All the gray hairs were out for the night. Can't blame them. The kids usually opt for spaghetti. The best part about this place is you get to pick two desserts. They actually let you have as many you wanted this year. In past they had two tickets per person, but not this year! The same gregarious priest as always was keeping the crowd entertained. I swear he wasn't back last year, but it was good to see him back doing his best. Theo got chosen to pick the winning numbers for the 50/50 raffle. The priest gave us a hard time for not getting a raffle ticket. Don't worry about me. Just daydreaming about a back screen porch like this. I made Brookie a brookie brownie. Could've used more brow...

Search This Blog