Happy Memorial Day!

At the last minute, I decided I wanted to sleep in instead of join friends at the beach today. So, we went strawberry picking instead. In a holiday miracle of sorts, we ran into virtually no traffic at any point during our jaunt out to Sussex County Strawberry Farm. When we presented ourselves at the field, the guy in charge was a little worried about our pale, pale children out in that hot, hot sun. We got little baskets instead of big ones, and I set my timer for 30 minutes. We were got back into the car right as it rang, I think. In spite of the short amount of time we spent actually picking (because of it?), we had a fantastic time.

Evelyn proved a champion a determining which berries were ripe enough.  Hyrum proved a champion at eating berries in various stages of ripeness, and I fear, rottenness. Since strawberries are possibly his favorite food, he was in hog heaven. I think he probably picked about as much as Evelyn did; he just stored them all in his belly instead of a basket. We have no pictures of any of this because my phone ate them.

After that 20 or 25 minutes of backbreaking manual labor, we thought it was only fair that we treat ourselves to Chick-fil-A.

Then, it was back home. We tried to stop at to stop at Costco on the way, but it was closed! Tragedy. The fact that traffic back in was just as lovely and easy as it had been on the way out more than made up for it, though.

The farm where we picked also had a gardening center, so we bought some herbs, a few vegetables, and a couple token flowers for this summer's terrace garden. When we moved into our apartment, I thought I would really enjoy growing things on the terrace. As it turns out, I sort of don't. Luckily, as it turns out, John and Evelyn really do. Once we got home, they made a quick trip to Home Depot, and then it was planting time.

While everyone else did the heavy lifting, I made Pioneer Woman's beef and snow pea stir fry for dinner. I highly recommend it, along with strawberry picking, Chick-fil-A, and letting the rest of your family get filthy gardening while you chill inside with the A/C on.