A berry good day

This particular TGIF takes on a whole new meaning. It has been a very crazy and super busy week around here. The week started off slow, with only not much going on. I spent most of the day applying for jobs and such. Tuesday and Wednesday I ran errands and took the kids to their classes and going to the park and/or library. Wednesday-Friday morning I went to three interviews in a row, so that was a bit nerve-wracking. On Thursday after my interview, I went to the pharmacy to pick up something for hubby, went to my MIL's to pick up some things from her, went to a friend's house to let their dog out (they were gone camping), and then finally made it home to pick up the kids at the sitter's. When I arrived home, I found a bunch of ants crawling all over my living room floor. They had come in with some dog food bags that had been left outside for a short time. Anyway, I spent the next several hours getting rid of them and cleaning up my downstairs. Anyone who knows me well can attest to my neorosis about ants. Hubby often jokes that if he wants the house clean, he just has to mention ants and it sends me into a cleaning frenzy. The bright side is that my downstairs looks far better than before and the dog food is safe once more.


On another note, I have also been dealing with stressors regarding another weekend's plans that seems to be hitting every roadblock possible in our efforts to arrange it. This whole other blog, so we'll leave it at that for now. Then today after my last interview, I changed clothes and picked up the kids. While we were out and about, I got another dreaded rejection call, but the silver lining was that I was their second choice (yet again) and they wanted to invite me back to interview for another position that had just opened up. Will try for it, but not holding my breath...but I digress.

Anyway, at this point I was feeling a bit low and discouraged as I had actually thought I might get this job. I took a moment to just breathe. Then I decided to take the day off from all the stress drove out to a local berry farm with my kids. I'd never actually gone berry-picking before and neither had they, so it was a lot of fun for all of us. I was thoroughly impressed with how careful the kids were. K in particular had a keen eye when it came to picking out just the right ones. N did really well too, he was just having more fun scanning the rows and humming along to himself, then getting in there to grab them off of the vine. They've both helped my MIL in her garden a lot, so they already kind of knew what to do. We talked about the differences in color and ripeness, concepts they quickly caught onto. After we filled our three buckets with both raspberries and marionberries, we decided it was time to go eat lunch and get of the hot sun.

We let my friend's dog out again and ran a quick errand. Then the kids voted on having Arby's. It'd been ages since my last time eating there, so it was especially yummy. The kids had ham and cheese sandwiches, I had their signature french dip, and we all had some seasoned curly fries. After our bellies thanked us for filling them up, we started to head home. However, the kids happened to see the county fair and pleaded with me to stop in. I was tired, but got a second wind after lunch, so I agreed to go there for a little bit. I warned them we were only staying for a short while. Well, you can probably guess that notion went out the window the minute they saw the rides. The kids rode the big and little roller coasters, slid down the super slide, drove bumper cars, whirled around in the swings, and raced on carousel horses. We skipped the carnival booths, but we caught a wild west rope trickster show as the kids enjoyed snow cones. I also had them sit down with a caricaturist for a keepsake picture. We made a quick pass through the animals section to look at the draft horses, cattle, sheep, and alpacas. On our way out, we had to walk by the 4-H pig show and wow was that a powerful odor.

By the time we made it home, it was dinnertime already. Hubby was out with his buddy to go see The Dark Knight, so we were on our own for the evening. I was in no mood to cook, so it was a cereal night (lunch was plentiful enough). I washed all the berries and dished up some for the kids with a little sugar sprinkled on top for their dessert. All in all it was a really amazing day we had. I love having times cherish like this with them, which is why I love being home with them in the summertime. They were so tired, they crashed early and I am not far behind. My legs are jello from all the walking, so I am ready to prop them up and go lay in bed with a good book or watch some TV. I'm gonna go enjoy a few berries myself first and go from there. As Strawberry Shortcake herself would say, we had a berry good day!