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.

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.