Strawberry Pickin'

For the past 3 years, and many many before that, 4 generations of our family have ridden in a car for 30 miles to pick one of my absolute favorite fruits....strawberries.

My grandmother, JoJo, started this tradition when we were really young. She'd pick us up early from our babysitter's house, drive us to Lexington (at the time that was the only place to pick strawberries) and we'd pick. My uncle used to joke that they should weigh us before we went in the patch and weigh us when we come out so that the patch could account for the strawberries we'd eaten while we were there. Inevitably, our stomachs would hurt for the next day because we had gorged ourselves on strawberries.

I went off to college, life got in the way, and I hadn't been to pick for a while, until I had Josie. I was on maternity leave, so JoJo asked me to go with her. And I've taken the babies every year since. This year, they really enjoyed themselves.

The babies were great helpers, at first. Josie picked with JoJo (my mother's mother) and Wesley picked with BobBob (my mother).

Then, they discovered the sweet taste of this delicious fruit and that it was ok to eat them in the field. It was all downhill from there.

Wesley probably ate 10 strawberries while we were there, and absolutely pitched a fit when we took the half squished one from his hand so that we could get in the car to come home.