Cherry Picking

We headed out to Whittier Farms for our annual cherry picking expedition. I love that this place is small and family run. No higher prices to allow for touristy crap. And it's where Bryan worked last summer so we get to enjoy people actually knowing us a wee bit.

 I wasn't able to get too many pictures  before my camera died. I fear that this time it just might be dead, dead. Hoping not but we shall see. Given that Alan's camera only focuses half the time and mine only works when it wants to, I think we may need to start shopping for cameras again. Sigh.

We now have a bit more than 30 lbs of cherries to eat and process this weekend.  A say a bit more because they did give us a slight discount. Yet another thing I like about small family run places. The folks running the register have the ability to do such things for you just because.

And I think I heard a couple of kids talking about going out to check on the cherries in our yard and the raspberry bushes. Not that I think any of that will make it into the  house.

Riding Pictures

 Just a few riding pictures. Katie seems to be making excellent progress and really enjoys the lessons.

Pentecost

We celebrated Pentecost last week with cake. Because life is always better with cake. I have crafts and such things ready but kept forgetting to do them with the kids so hopefully we will do them this week.

2 pounds of strawberries and a table full of happy children. Life is good.

Keeping the Little Ones Busy

Small hands and long presentations do not always go well together. But as much as possible we believe it is important for the entire family to attend award functions for each other. Which means packing coloring books, lacing cards, matching games, and other such games.  The latest in young child entertainment around our house are mini mosaics.

These art kits are fairly inexpensive and can keep a kid in their seat for 15 to 30 minutes depending on the age of the kid and the complexity of the project. And bought us a decent amount of seat time earlier this week.

Court of Awards

The older 3 boys had their end of year Court of Awards for Boy Scouts this week. Which meant a family pot luck/picnic for everyone. Planned by the adult leaders. Meaning as long as all you wanted was chips, cookies, and brownies, it was an awesome evening. If you wanted real food, you had to come home and eat. Yup, it is the same thing every year. The kids come home full of sugar and the adults come home starving. But all 3 boys made progress this year so a good time was had by all.

Liam will join the troop next year. I will admit on some level I feel a bit badly for the boys because there are so many of them that many of the adults never bother to learn their names. They just refer to them as "Oh, you are a Hitchings boy."

Home Depot Kids' Workshop

The younger six enjoyed another round of the free Kids' Workshops at Home Depot. Yup, totally free on the first Saturday of the month. Check them out if you have one near you.

This month we made wooden tractors. I've smartened up and started asking for a second set of hands when I check in because with 6 kids and one adult, a little extra help finding hammers and nails and such things just makes things go a bit more smoothly.

Pictures

Sitting in church this evening, I realized all the kids were dressed in matching clothes. Not being one to pass up an opportunity like that, I planned to get a few pictures when we got home.  I was envisioning a nice stair step type picture of all the kids lined up oldest to youngest.  Not too much to ask you would think.  Well, it started like this:

Not too bad. There were a few other nice ones that were just slightly out of focus. Then we got this one:

And it ended kind of like this:

At least they all enjoyed themselves.