Strawberry Pickin'

I picked Drew and my sisters up from school today, and on the way home, I made a surprise stop at Brown Farms so they could pick some strawberries. The strawberry fields were incredibly soggy because it has rained every day for the past two weeks, so we took off our shoes, rolled up our pants, and started picking. You have to pay by the bucket, but you can eat all you want while you're picking, but after about 15 minutes of picking, when I realized that I was the only one with a clean face and strawberries in my bucket, I seriously regretted telling them about the all you can eat strawberry buffet. After a little encouraging, the kids started quickly filling up their buckets with the biggest, weirdest shaped strawberries they could find. Quality was of no importance to them... it was all about who could find the biggest, funkiest strawberry. The fact that they would be eating these huge, mushy, rotten monster berries didn't even cross their minds. Ah... to be a child and to live solely in the moment... I crave that innocence.

Dirty Hands

I love that Sean and I completely balance each other in every way. We are so different, but it just works for us. Sean is always making me laugh and grounding me with his common sense, and he finds my nerdiness quite amusing. He probably has no idea what nucleotides join together to form deoxyribonucleic acid, and I can't begin to explain how the engine in my car works. All that I can say is that I LOVE a man that isn't afraid to get his hands dirty; I love that we love and respect our quirky differences, and I love that together we make a whole.

Rice and Bananas

Maddi had her first solid food this week. I'm not one to rush solid food, but she was having some tummy issues, so her doctor suggested that I go ahead and give it a try. Drew fed her her first bites. He gets so excited every time she accomplishes something new. He couldn't have been more proud if he had eaten the bananas himself.

A little bit of Green

Kroger is having a contest to find a new design for their reusable grocery bags, and this is what I created. If I win, I get a thousand dollars and they make and sell my bag, so GO VOTE for my bag!

http://www.designareusablebag.com/vote-for-designs/bag.aspx?BagId=46233

You can also make your own design, and they will give you a coupon to get a free reusable bag. So, go vote, and let's all do our part to clean up this beautiful Earth that God created for us.

Our BEAUTIFUL babies

I LOVE these two little munchkins.

PANOPLY

We went to Panoply last weekend. It was HOT, but fun. We got to see lots of art, some dance performances, and some awesome music. Here are a few pictures...minus Sean because he was scouring the park for some fresh squeezed Nanny's Lemonade. Silly man :)

Service Project

Every good act is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the good he does in this world to his fellows. -Moliere

If there was one characteristic that I could just simply give my children, it would be the ability to freely give of themselves in service. However, since charity is something that must be learned, we take every opportunity to encourage our children to have compassion and to let them see us perform various acts of kindness. Whether it is helping someone change a tire, volunteering at Drew's school, donating our extra toys to a charity, or performing acts of physical labor in our community, I feel that they equally show our willingness to serve God rather than ourselves. As our children learn to sacrafice their time and energy in service, I know they will also learn humility, gratitude, kindness, confidence, honesty, and compassion. So, to reaffirm our family's charitable desires, we participated in our church's "Day of Service." It was only a regional event, but 11 states and hundreds of thousands of volunteers participated in providing needed services for their communities (says lds.org). Our group was assigned to clean up a local elementary/middle school. I carried Maddi in the backpack and we raked leaves and pulled weeds, and Sean and Drew cut down overgrowth and hauled it to the road. We had SO MUCH FUN! I hope we can do it again soon because it was so fun to work together with the other families from church and make a difference in our community.