Blueberries

The boys and I went blueberry picking in the rain this week. I've been wanting to go for a while and this week was pretty skimpy on activities and appointments so I decided Tuesday would be a good day. We ended up going to Gin House Branch Farm in Decatur. It was excellent. They had a ton of ripe, plump berries and they work on the honor system, so you can just show up whenever you like and put your money in their lockbox and start picking.

We got very wet and dirty, but at least we weren't hot. The boys had a blast! We filled up a gallon bucket in no time and Patrick filled up his belly. I think he ate as many as we put in our bucket. He was just shoving them in his mouth by the handful.

I made this blueberry muffin recipe this morning and it is excellent! This has become my new favorite baking blog. She has a very interesting looking vegan chocolate cake that I'm dying to make for my sister-in-law, Lizzie.

Anyone have any good blueberry recipes?

Picture Update

Hello friends, it's been a while! The boys have been taking deliciously long naps lately, so I'm going to attempt a long overdue update with lots of pictures. This should definitely make up for my absence because I have serious issues with adding pictures in blogger and this will probably take me a week to get finish and get everything lined up correctly.

We took our annual family beach trip to Sea Grove in June. We all had a blast and I'm still sad that we're not there. I'm having beach withdrawal and I'm trying to figure out some way for us to squeeze in another beach trip before the new baby arrives. This is our family picture-it had to include our 2 dump trucks because they are a big part of the family lately.

I was about 6 months along in this picture. This pregnancy has been a doozy compared to my other two. I have just felt completely run-down the entire time. I'm ready to have this baby! We are still waiting for the big day to know the gender. It's been killing me having to pass on all the bargain baby clothes I've seen while shopping lately. I don't have any instinctual feelings either way on the gender so I will be as surprised as anyone when we find out. This baby is very active and so far very healthy and we are thankful for that.

Jackson took swim lessons for the first time. He did great. The first day was a bit traumatic, but I think that was due to the fact that we were late and I pretty much had to walk into this new, hot, humid place and throw him in the water with his scary looking man teacher. After that day, he warmed up quickly and enjoyed doing his "scoop hands" and floating and even jumping in from the side of the pool.

Alex had shoulder surgery the first week in July. This was surgery to repair an injury he got while playing in the ocean last September. I was scared to death about the surgery and the recovery, but he has done remarkably well. His shoulder is doing great and he has hardly whined at all! It's amazing what they can do with arthroscopic surgery-he just has 3 tiny incision marks and hopefully he'll be able to throw a baseball again soon.

Patrick has had quite a learning explosion over the last couple of months. He is talking up a storm and putting words together. He'll repeat pretty much anything we say and is learning his colors and he loves to hum. He loves trains, trucks and race cars just as much as his big brother and has really started to enjoy reading time. He has also started to show a lot of interest in the potty. We spend a lot of time hanging out in the bathroom, but haven't had any success yet.

Alex finished our newest home improvement project, the mudroom, the week before his surgery. It is awesome! This space is the walk through from our garage and actually used to be our laundry area before we moved that upstairs. It's great to make use of that wasted space and have lots of storage for sports stuff, purses and backpacks.

Hope you're all having a great summer!