Is this one perfect?

Strawberry picking is one of my favorite activities to do each year. I have done it since I was growing up and we lived in New Jersey and continued when I moved to South Carolina. I didn't go for a few years when I was pregnant with Michael and his first year but we have gone every year since then.

We normally go to the same place, about 30 minutes from our house. Since we were visiting my parents this weekend, we picked strawberries there. There is a farm about 5 minutes from their house that you can pick strawberries, blueberries and blackberries in season.

Michael and I went with a friend of my mom's while Katie stayed behind with Todd at my parents. She wasn't feeling well and I could only imagine that she would have been all over the patch. The day was beautiful and the weather was not too hot, for once. We got our buckets and headed pretty far down the row. There were quite a few people picking too.

This was the first year that Michael really understood what we were doing. He actually picked strawberries from the plants and didn't throw them in the bucket from 5 feet away! Before we started picking, I explained to him what we were looking for and how to get them off the plants. We were looking for big, red strawberries. Michael told me that those ones would be delicious. He was doing a great job picking them and had his own bucket. After picking a few and getting my seal of approval, he started getting the hang of it.



We would look at strawberries on the plant and Michael would hold one up before picking it and ask me "Is this one perfect?" After I told him it was, he would pull the strawberry from the plant and place it in the bucket. It was so cute because he really wanted to do a good job getting juicy, red strawberries. I asked him if he wanted to try one while we were out in the field but he just wasn't interested and told me that we needed to wash them first. So I ate a few for him.



I consider this year a success. We were out there for about an hour, which was just long enough to get 2 buckets of strawberries without getting bored or overheated. I really had a great time with Michael too!