Black and Blue

No, this post is not about bruises. (Thank goodness!) It's about berries! Last weekend, we went on a blueberry and blackberry picking adventure to the farm where we get our CSA from. It's about an hour away from us, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. Turns out it was a great place to visit! A nice big covered porch with tables, a porch swing, and ceiling fans. A cute little market shop with various fresh produce and local goodies (think jam, honey and the like). Lots of kid stuff to play on, including a pirate ship! And the berry bushes were just a short walk from the main building and were "easy pickings" as long as you weren't too jumpy about Japanese beetles buzzing at you amongst the blackberries.

Is that a scale Hayden is sitting on? Why is that, you may ask?

....Because this is what the sign says!

If we lived closer, I could see this being a really cute thing to do every year to see how the kids grow!

Along the blackberry row. We started with blackberries first.

Yummy!

Then we moved on to blueberry picking. Hayden jumped right in, because she is a professional berry picker by now. She encouraged Poppop to pick with her, because "this is the best bush, with the best berries."

Even Jason worked hard at picking blueberries.

More yummy!

Eliza thought it was a bit too hot for berry picking. She's holding onto my legs and I am taunting her by taking her picture instead of picking her up.

But don't worry about Eliza.
Jason took her back to the shaded porch and they had a great time on the swing.

Poppop and Hayden show off their blueberry haul. (Eliza loaned Poppop her bucket.)

After we were done picking, we hung out back at the building for a while. Both girls loved the swing. We ate a little bit of lunch, checked out the market place ('seconds' cantaloupes were onl a $1 each!), and paid for our berries. The berries were QUITE expensive, even if they were certified organic. I mean, we picked them after all! But the best part of the day was....

ICE CREAM!!! Homemade, inexpensive ice cream served in HOMEMADE waffle cones. Waffle cones that were made fresh that morning. DELICIOUS!
Don't you just love how Hayden's eyes are lit up in this picture?! They even had her favorite flavor - mint chocolate chip. (We also sampled cookies-n-cream and peach. Yum.)

All in all, it was a great excursion to Vollmer Farm. Supposedly they have quite the setup for pumpkins in October, but I'm just not sure we'll be making the trip again this year, unless Nugget makes a special request. But we did have fun picking blacks and blues!

Me and my berry-picking protegee.

Puddle Jumping

Last week we had absolutely miserable summer weather. So hot, so humid. The only redeeming thing about this nasty weather was the creation of some lovely summer thunderstorms, especially since the kids still managed to sleep through them! At one point last week, after an especially heavy downpour during a storm, I decided it was time to brave the heat and humidity and go outside. The dog needs to get walked occasionally after all. So we went for a puddle walk!

I encouraged them to put on grubby play clothes that could get wet - and Hayden reluctantly agreed to change out of her dress, once she had established that she could put her dress back on when we came back inside. And though I told them crocs would be great splashing shoes, they both wanted to put on boots instead.

They may have looked silly but they had a great time walking thru all the puddles and mini-rivers. Even Blizz got in on the action, walking in the water and tasting it. The pictures aren't that great (my camera lens was all fogged up) but you can get a feel for the fun of the jumping, and the wetness of the day!

Humidity Hair!

Birthday Celebration

Hayden turned four today and we tried to give her an extra special fun day. Of course, the motto of the day was still "you can be the queen, but you can't be mean" to keep her bossy, tantrum-y, dictatorial style in check, but she did fine and had a fun day.

First off, she's in summer camp this week at her preschool, so she got to take in cupcakes for snack. I wanted to make sure she got to take in a special snack for her birthday at school, since I don't see her getting a lot of opportunity to do that in the future with a July birthday! She and Grandma made cupcakes yesterday afternoon, while Nugget and I tried a prenatal yoga class. And then I frosted them in pink with sprinkles last night. All 15 cupcakes I sent to school did not return, so I think they went over well.

When she woke up in the morning today, Hayden came down to this...
Streamers everywhere! Balloons and birthday banners too. Eliza said "wow" when she first saw it. And Hayden got this silly smile and said "guys, what's this?" in this super cheesy, really cute way she has. (The streamers in the doorway were quite the attraction for both girls. To my surprise, none of them got ripped off until AFTER cake in the evening. Even then, it was only one, and Eliza -the culprit - went "oh no, oh no!")

The dining room was decorated too, with a pink tablecloth, star sprinkles, extra balloons and a pile of presents. We discovered that it's never too early to play with balloons!

The next order of business for perfect Hayden birthday celebration was to bake and decorate a pink castle cake. I had asked for cake decorating supplies for my birthday, and along with tips and frosting bags, had gotten a book on basic cake decorating with several pictures of cakes. Hayden loved looking thru it and immediately focused in on the castle cake. So back in March, she had already picked out her birthday cake, and didn't waver this whole time! Since I'm always up for a baking adventure, I said sure, we can do that and made my best attempt at it.

my model (sorry it's sidewise, but I think you get the idea.)

it started with two cakes and a HUGE batch of pink frosting. If anyone has tips on getting cakes out of pans in one piece, please share! I have failed in almost all my recent attempts, including today as you can see here. It all worked out okay, but the cake was shorter than intended.

Despite the mangled cakes, somehow I managed to frost it nice and smooth (for the most part) with all that pink icing. There is a TON of icing on that sucker! When Hayden was allowed up from quiet time, she was quite pleased with the color. And gave me a thumbs up on the taste taste too. (What kind is this Mommy? Butter cream. This is my favorite!)

Then it was decoration time. It took too much concentration to assemble the ice cream cones correctly to get any intermediary pictures. Plus I was having trouble getting a good photo, even when Hayden got to start helping. She was quite excited to add the candies to the cake. Both E and H liked tasting them too.

The finished product! Looks pretty good, don't you think? Mostly like the picture?

Eliza had a good time observing the process, especially when she was allowed to taste things. :)

For dinner, we went out to Chik-fil-a, because it was kids' night. We were going to go at lunch, but at this particular one Tuesdays are kids night where kids eat free with an adult meal and there is a craft. We'd talked about going, but never had, so this seemed the perfect opportunity. It was packed! Grandma and Poppop met us there to experience the chaos. Hayden was wired and didn't eat much beyond one chicken nugget and a couple fries. Eliza had her beloved milk and a couple bites of nugget and fries. They tried the playground but it was full of screaming kids so they didn't last too long. The craft was cute, but fairly easy. (I do have pics but they were on the other camera and not uploaded yet. maybe tomorrow). We ate, played and crafted along with half of southwest Durham families and then we headed back home for presents and cake!


She got tons of presents and this one from Grandma and Poppop was one of her favorites - as she said as she opened it. The story of the Wizard of Oz. After some presents, we did cake.
After dinner, we finished up presents. We saved our special present for last. We had found a cabbage patch kid with the name Ruth Hayden, and just had to get it, even though it wasn't specifically something we were planning on. Hayden was a bit perplexed by the fancy snap-on-hair version, but I think she liked the special name!
Then we let her pick one toy to play with before heading up to bath and bed. I have to admit I felt a little bit of parental pride when she picked one of the things we had picked out - a little cinderella dress up doll. Eliza had a good time playing with some of the other toys, even in their packaging.
And that was her special birthday day. Happy Birthday Hayden! We hope you enjoyed your pink princess birthday. We love you!

PS Thank you to everyone for her wonderful presents and cards. Even though they may not be featured here, she loves everything.

Happy Birthday Hayden!

Can you believe it's been 4 years since Hayden was born? She's come a long way, with so much more to come.

Happy Birthday Hayden!

4th of July at the Eno

The fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays, as I think you can tell from previous blog entries. Summer time, grilling out, fireworks, just gathering with friends and family with no presents or fancy meals - it's great! But one of my favorite things about the fourth when I lived in NC was going to the Festival for the Eno which is held over the fourth each year. It's music, food, art, etc - all to raise money to buy more parkland along the Eno River. I usually volunteered to facepaint (thus getting in free!). It was always hot hot hot, but I loved it. I hadn't been since we moved to State College so I was excited to finally get to go again this year, though I was a bit dubious about how dragging two small children around the festival, while pregnant, in hot humid weather would work. The answer - it worked surprisingly well!

We started with a free (airconditioned!) bus ride to the festival itself. The bus was a big hit with both the girls. We managed to find Grandma who was volunteering at a drink booth, and she told us about these neat wooden building blocks. Hayden loved them and spent at least 15 minutes building a structure that used as many blocks as she could.

getting started.

Can't you just hear Hayden? "No Eliza! Not like that!"

Our festive girl and her finished product.

While she was busy building, Eliza and I checked out the sand sculpture and dug a little bit in the play sand.

Not the best sand picture but she is holding a shovel and you can see her festive outfit!

What professionals can sculpt! Still a work in progress.

After building and digging, we added our own art to the big E-N-O community art project. I think Hayden really liked getting to color wherever on a huge O. Eliza had more fun trying to find tops for all the markers, a fruitless endeavor.

Jason's contribution was the "me too!" at the top of the O.

Then we were getting really warm, so we wandered down to the river to dip in our feet. Hayden liked wandering around, but Eliza begged to be picked up almost immediately. We hung out for a few more minutes, hoping we could get to play with one of the free nets that had been set out in the river area, but they were all used.
Eliza's preferred spot on the river bank. Still not sure why she didn't like wading in the Eno.

Then we managed to put our shoes back on and checked out the critters section. This is also where my camera died. We saw bees, salamanders, snakes, turtles, frogs, bugs, owls, doves, etc. Hayden learned about that the spotted salamander was the honorary animal of the festival (there's a different one each year) and that yellow bellied sliders are turtles that live in the Eno.

Next it was lunch time, and after a difficult trip up to the food court area (we had to drag H away from some exhibits, and then convince her to walk uphill in the sunshine to find lunch). Festival food is one of my favorites and we had a good time sampling different things: ribbon fries, a cheesesteak, lemonade, soft pretzel, ice cream, and a cherry-lime locopop. We were a bit worried about Eliza as we sat down for lunch, but she rallied when we pulled out some milk for her and ate all of a mini-bagel we'd brought, plus ice cream, and much of my delicious yet tart locopop.

After lunch the kids enjoyed the "musical petting zoo" that was right behind our shady lunch spot, and then we checked out a few art booths. Then we lucked into seeing the Paper Hand Puppet parade that had all the HUGE puppets on sticks, or carried by people, with drums playing and everything. Jason took a few pics with his phone I can share.

H watching the revelry with Popop.

Oh, and there was this cool polar bear and cub made out of plastic bags!

After the parade, we bought a tshirt for me and a onesie for Nugget (with a salamander!) and called it a day. The girls did amazingly well for a very busy long hot day and both took naps when we got home. A successful first Eno Festival for both of them. No fireworks in the evening after such a busy day, but we did enjoy some hotdogs that we cooked stovetop since it was POURING rain outside. The girls finished off the day with homemade blue and red popsicles for dessert! (which by the way, were delicious and made from almost all local fruit. so tasty!)