April 30

Remember a while back where we had a "family vacation day" and we did nothing - no cooking, cleaning, work of ANY kind, and just spent the entire day together playing? Well we did that again today and it was so refreshing and fun!

We took the kids to a new strawberry farm and got over 11 pounds of berries in way less than an hour's time. I do have 5 kids, ya know :)   I am so excited about eating these all up. There are like nine million recipes I want to try! They had a little frozen shop in the place we went and they had the BEST strawberry frozen yogurt I have ever tasted. Seriously! We ate said frozen yogurt before lunch, which we ate at some hole-in-the-wall place called "The Gator Cafe". No - there was no gator at The Gator Cafe just in case you were wondering :)

Our original plan was to go to the beach when we finished up with the strawberry thing, but my wonderful husband made a suggestion to change those well laid out plans. This is something that I don't typically go along with, but since it was *family vacation day* I was trying to be flexible. For at least a little while, anyways. So he suggested that we go to the river where people go canoeing, kayaking, and tubing. I had been there before and I was already worried...but, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and much to my surprise, it was beautiful. There was a great sandbar, and the water probably didn't go above my ankles for a long ways out. Did I mention that I have 5 kids? What more could a momma with 5 kiddos in tow ask for than a sandbar with ankle-deep water for 50+ feet on all sides? That's right, a sister and a husband tagging along to do the hard work :) Like putting up the sunscreen tent, oh yeah, and APPLYING the sunscreen to 5 kiddos, and helping me keep an eye on all those kids. Do you see why I haven't attempted to go near any large body of water in the last two years? (Well, besides the oil spill!)  It was such a great day and we are so excited to go back soon!

I will leave you with a few pictures for today:

I am so proud of this "accidental picture".  Can you see Claire's reflection? LOVE it!

Chloe was serious about playing with the sand :) Do NOT come between her and her bucket, mister!

Caleb is so stinkin' cute! That's all boy,  right there!

I wish some of these pictures would have shown you the beautiful clear sky we had today! Stay tuned though because I will be scrapping these very soon! They are high up the to-be-scrapped priority list.:)