Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, A Camping We Will Go...

For the Memorial Day weekend we decided to join 3 other families in the ward for a campout at Linville Falls in the Blue Ridge Parkway. Aside from the 18 children (10 under the age of six) and the rain storm from 3am to 6am, we had a great time! It was our first camping trip as a family since moving to North Carolina, and the Blue Ridge Parkway provided a beautiful backdrop for the occasion.

After "sleeping" through the rain, we hiked down to Linville Falls. It was about 1.5 miles of rugged terrain, but the view was worth the hike. Having all this scenery so close is why we love living in North Carolina! Below are some snap shots from the adventure.

Strawberries

It's strawberry season here in North Carolina so on Saturday, we had a family outing; we went strawberry picking at a strawberry farm! We got 2 gallons (13lbs) of beautiful, red, sweet strawberries for $12.

Tanner was our official basket holder and he was so proud of his job...until the baskets got too heavy. The boys loved to pick the strawberries and snitched a few to make sure they tasted right.

We came home, washed, sliced, bagged, and froze our stawberries for later use.

Micheal and Clayton were very into helping, their job was to clean out the hull and help slice them. They were shocked when we let them use knives, something we have never done before.

We would rather have our kids see where our food really comes from and participate, hands on, in harvesting than just buying it in the store. Since our little "farm" isn't ready to harvest large quantities of fruit, going fruit picking to supplement our "farm" for a while sounds like fun to us, it's a good excuse for more family time! We also found out that they will have raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and peaches ready to be picked in June so I'm sure we'll go out again in a month to pick some of those fruits. Oh, and in October we'll go for pumpkins! There is nothing like freshly picked fruits and veggies.

Haircut

Last week I finally got my haircut!(early mothers day gift) I went last Friday but didn't like the way it looked so I went back today and the owner fixed for free! Now I love it! This is as close to a self shot as I am going to get too:)!