Strawberry Picking Adventures

I took Elina and Eli out of school early one day just to go pick strawberries!  Last year I only took Evie and Eulee and the older kids were pretty miffed about it.  Since then, they have been continuously asking me, "Are we going to be able to go pick strawberries with you this year?"  They wanted to make sure I didn't leave them in the dust again.

Eulee was nice enough to take a nap during the 40 minute drive out to the orchard.  But once we arrived, she promptly peed in her pants.  Boooo!  So I used up my only extra set of underwear and pants within 5 minutes.

After that we headed out to the strawberry plants.  Eli and Elina are pros now.  I gave them a basket and they filled it all up on their own in record time.  They did an awesome job!

I had Evie and Eulee with me...so I wasn't quite as successful.  I think by next year Evie will be an awesome strawberry picker.  But this year, she kept accidentally squeezing the strawberries too hard as she tried to pick them off the plant!  Not good.  So I had to demote her...she could only point out ripe strawberries to me and then I would pick them.  She still managed to have fun though.

As you probably guessed, Eulee was absolutely no help at all.  But at least she wasn't stomping on plants or squishing strawberries.  She was just bored and wandering up and down all the rows.  I was trying to finish my row at a faster pace, so I just let her wander off.

Then I noticed that she had taken one of her shoes off.  So I yelled over to her, "Put your shoe on!"  She proceeded to yell something back to me, but I couldn't hear her.  Then I sent Elina over to her to ask her to put her shoe on.  Once Elina checked out the situation, she announced, "Mommy!  Eulee peed in her pants!"

WHAT??  She had JUST peed in her pants when we first arrived!!  What happened?  Of course, the 2 older grandmas standing close to me were cracking up at Elina's comment!

At this point, I didn't even care about Eulee's situation anymore.  I just wanted to fill my basket by finishing my row of strawberries as quickly as possible because we had to get back by a certain time.  So I told Elina, "It's fine!  Just leave her!  I'm going to finish up real quick!"  Then I filled up my basket, took some pictures of the kids together, and went to pay for the berries.

Eulee was a hot mess!  I mean, look at the picture above...she is missing a shoe!  At least in the picture you can't tell that her pants are soaking wet.  Plus, I didn't have any more extra clothes so she had to ride with her bare bum on the way home.  Not that she minded one bit.

I just find it comical that this was so much hard work for me and I CHOSE the activity!!  Having fun is hard work with little ones.  But I know these memories will be burned into all our minds and we've all been laughing about it when we tell the story.

Makin' memories, right?  Makin' memories!