Siblings and Berry Picking

I realized that my audience is two fold. There are the readers today - grandparents and aunts and uncles. This blog helps keep you updated as to the happenings now. But the other audience is my kids. I am working on formatting the blog to get it printed for each kid. It is fun to flip through old photo albums of your childhood and remember those moments the pictures captured. But I don't print pictures any more. This blog is the best way for my kids to have a connection to their childhood. So kids, when I reference a siblings blog, sorry, that is for the audience today.

It is fun when we do things together as siblings, for a moment it is kind of like permission to slip backwards in time and just "play." I felt that way last summer swimming at mom's house. I kind of slacked off on parental duties to flip into the pool and try to "surf" across the pool and just be silly. This past weekend Peter, Jill and Lisa were here. While I did not get to totally ditch parent duties it was fun to occasionally joke around with someone who is not under three feet.

We went berry picking, as you have seen in Lisa's blog and probably will in Jill/Peter's blog. But what we didn't take pictures of was the card playing and sitting around talking. Peter lost. I (tied with Tyler) won. Of course :). I wish that I could spend more time with siblings. Drew and Jessica of course had to move all the way back East just when we moved closer to Provo. Lori and Zach are counting down days to be back East. Peter and Jill are unsure where they will be, but looking Eastward. Lisa is still hanging around for a while! And Katie still has to make it out here. I feel sad when I think that everyone is going to move away. So, I'll throw this out - we'd love to have y'all stay close. Yes we will abuse you for babysitting. But I promise when Topher and Maddie are old enough to babysit, you may abuse them as much as you want! So just think about it - free babysitting! And one day, when you have kids, you will realized how valuable that is!

Okay, back to what we did - berry picking. We drove down to Mapleton (35 mins south of Lehi) to a small farm. We went there last year and had a blast so off we went again. Everyone did a good job picking berries until Caroline saw the deer. She then promptly fed the goats and deer all of her berries. She is such a little animal lover. I think I got 21 jars of blackberry and raspberry jam. Not bad for $34. But best of all, we got out and did something to make a memory!