We joined our friends for some fun blueberry and blackberry picking. It was a sunny fun way to spend the afternoon with picking and a picnic. We picked blueberries first. The kids were fun to watch together. Some picked and filled their buckets, some picked and ate, some picked rocks and filled buckets, some watched after the babies, some ran and played games in the field, and some ventured around the bushes like a maze. Poor Julia had a rought time with a busted lip, the second of the week.

Then we went up to the blackberry rows to pick. I love to see how the kids gravitate to play with each other and which Mama they end up with. Ms. Sara was the hit with my girls, then Ms. Ashley, and only last did they come to the row with their own Mama. The girls did a pretty good job of picking the darkest of the blackberries. Emily pointed out a red & black one and told me that it was not sweet. I think she learned this by experience.

We have a little goat story to go with our blackberry picking. We picked next to a pen of goats. When we were almost done we noticed that one of the goats had gotten out of the pen and was grazing on the blackberries. As we finished up and started to walk out he moved over two rows to share our row. Emily was very curious about him. When we weren’t watching our buckets closely enough he ventured over and ate out of Ms. Ariaun’s bucket. She fought him for it and won. It reminded me of the little black bear eatting out of Little Sal’s mother’s blueberry bucket in “Blueberries for Sal” by Robert McCloskey.

We spent a beautiful hour out picking strawberries with some friends and their girls. It is nice to be out with people that Emily is familiar with; so that, she is so much more bold. She also wants to be like the other girls so she generally acts better and tries new things to be like them too. I think she had a lot of fun, she didn’t have any inhibitions about picking the red strawberries straight from the plants on the ground. No lesson on how to pick was necessary. I might need to check over the ones we picked to see if we have any overly ripe ones.

Emily picked strawberries, visited with the different mamas, hung out with the girls, fell down and required comfort, played in the dirt, found mud, played with Julia, snuck snacks from Elena’s lunch, and sampled Mommy’s strawberry fried pie. I call that a successful outing! It is hard to take photos, herd kids, pick strawberries, and get great photos. So, I have no photos of Julia because she hung out in our front pack and no great individual photos of Emily. But we had fun and enough photos to help us remember it by.