Father's Day

     We drove out to Westminster this past week to pick berries at Baugher's Farm.  The strawberries were ripe and very tasty!  The girls did really well picking and we ended up with 20 lbs. when we left.  They love picking fruit and veggies!  They have a surprisingly long attention span for it.   I hope they still love it when we have our own one day.

     There is a petting zoo at Baugher's with various farm animals.  Lyla found her miniature donkey.  Celee got a kiss from a cow.  Gwyn fell in love with the kittens.  Actually they all fell in love with the kittens and spent the better part of an hour and a half playing with them.  One kitten kept running up under a pallet and pawing at straw, so Gwyn played with him for a long time.  We answered an ad for zoo helpers there once a week.  I don't know if this is going to work out, but I think it is something we would all enjoy so much!

When we got home we made some yummy strawberry jam.  Even Jason likes it!  I ended up canning 10 pints of jam and freezing around 2 gallons of strawberries.  Then we had another whole container full to just eat.  And they are so strawberry-y!  I love having fresh from the field fruit to eat.  And I love the feeling of making things to eat later with it.  I love it when I get asked, "Can we have biscuits with dinner?" just so they can put homemade strawberry jam on it.  That means it's got to be good.

The girls keep begging me to let them play in the "ditch."  So we finally did.  This is really the drainage ditch/creek that runs down in front of our apartment.  It is neat because, minus the muffled car noise, it seems really secluded because of the rise on both sides of the creek and the dense trees and foliage around it.  So they climbed and waded and played there.  And of course they beg to go back every day.

     Not to be satisfied with a drainage ditch, we decided to go to an actual river for a picnic.  The water was super cold from all the rain, but that didn't stop the girls from getting in it, although I did not have to worry about them wanting to swim.  There were some other people there full-on swimming, but we all agreed to wait for a day when the water is warmer.  Tinkerbell did not want to get in the water at all either, but she had a great time running and rolling in the grass sans the leash.  Gunpowder Falls is such a beautiful place!  I am so glad it's only a short drive up the road.

     Saturday we went down to Arundel Mills with the expressed purpose of going to the Lego Store as a kind of Father's Day concession for Jason.  Little did he know we had other plans too!  When we drove up, Jason remarked, "Look!  There's the Medieval Times castle!" Yes, we all knew this already because we had secretly gotten tickets for us to have dinner there.  We decided to wait a bit to tell him though.  It was funny because before going down he thought we might go earlier and eat lunch at the Cheesecake Factory there and I just kept saying it would be better to go down later and eat dinner somewhere.  So after walking the mall for quite a while we told him the surprise.  I am so proud of the girls for keeping the secret.  Lyla did a great job, even though she kept getting really nervous about the secret dinner and that Jason might buy a watch before we gave him the one we had ordered him for Father's Day.  But it all worked out and the secret was fun to keep.  We sat in the blue section.  Whenever the Blue Knight would do well in a contest the Princess gave him carnations which he kissed and threw to girls in the blue section.  Gwyn and Celee both caught a carnation from him!  Lyla was a little disappointed to not get one, but I think the overall excitement of the show kept her from being too sad.  In the end the Blue Knight won which made it even more exciting for our section.  I don't know if the show is always the same and the Blue Knight always wins?  But it was a added bonus for us and the girls screamed and yelled and cheered for him throughout the tournament.  Jason and I cheered our best too.  I'm so glad we could surprise him and make him feel special for Father's Day.  He is a wonderful father and I am so lucky to be his partner in this crazy little family we have.

While we killed time in the mall before our show was to start, we went into the Bass Pro Shop.  Gwyn was the only one old enough to do the rock climbing wall, and the only one that had on closed toed shoes.  Even though her shoes were not the best for climbing, being the slip-on tennis shoe type, she climbed two of the paths.  This doesn't surprise me at all as all three of my girls have a tendency to climb anything nearby that could be climbed.  

As an aside, I finally got my new bedding for Jason and myself.  I realized that in the 12 1/2 years we've been married, I have never bought bedding.  I have bought sheets before (clearance or Hudson's cause that's how I roll) but we were still using hand-me-down comforters or quilts.  We tend to use stuff until it's holey, so I went to IKEA and bought us new bedding.  And the Moxie approves.