Without a trace

It’s blueberry season down here in the South, so blueberry picking we’ve gone.

We made a wonderful family outing of it; picking and eating, and picking and eating. Thankfully, they only weigh the bucket before and after it’s been filled… and not the children (or the parents!!!) before and after they have (eaten) their fill.

Because we love blueberries. And we ate a lot.

(Yes, that is a Play-Doh bucket. It was all I could find that was Noah-size)

And then we came home from blueberry picking and ate a lot. Because we’d picked a lot.

On top of eating fresh blueberries by the handful, we had blueberry pancakes made my wonderful breakfast Chef husband. Then we had blueberry coffee cake. It didn’t last long. We concocted homemade blueberry smoothies (basically yogurt blended with frozen blueberries and strawberries) that would have done Jamba Juice proud. The following week, we made blueberry syrup to top plain made-from-scratch-pancakes.

And when we had the new First Sergeant over for dinner, I made the most amazing blueberry pie ever using my friend Rita’s recipe.

Best Ever Blueberry Pie

2 pints blueberries (4 cups), 1 unbaked pie crust, 1/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg beaten, 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp. vanilla. Wash blueberries and place in pie crust. Cream butter & sugar in bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Spread over blueberries (or use cookie scoop to dollop). Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes or until done. *I topped it with vanilla icecream and it was melt in your mouth, oh so perfect, blueberry pie. I’ve never tasted one this good.*

 

We also added fresh blueberries to every bowl of cut fruit; put them in salads and in our breakfast cereal. We brought them to church potluck in the form of blueberry cobbler. And munched on frozen blueberries as an afternoon snack.

Then my husband called while I was typing this blog post and said he’d like to bring his soldiers breakfast tomorrow. So I immediately responded, “6 dozen blueberry muffins, coming right up, Dear!!” (which means we’re both working late tonight. Haha! Such is life for a Commander and his Wife!)

So the huge bucket of blueberries we picked a few weeks ago?? It’s gone. It’s gone without a trace.

 

 

Well… almost without a trace.

There are few tell tale signs here and there.

 

 

We love our blueberries, can you tell?

Fail

 

For some months now, we’ve been hanging out our laundry.

Not our dirty laundry, (we still try to keep that to ourselves), but our wet, just washed, laundry. The sun has been out and hot since February, making it perfect weather for clothes drying.

And it’s been great. Not only does our dryer get a break, but our utility bill is actually pleasant to look at.

So, it being a bright sun shiny day today, and me, being a mom of outdoorsmen (meaning I always have laundry to do), I hung out a load of laundry before we headed out the door. I love when I remember to do that. Somehow I feel like I’m multi-tasking if I have laundry drying, while also running errands and eating lunch. You know what I mean? It’s like a double whammy, with twice as much happening in the same amount of time. SCORE!!

Or… UN-SCORE!!!

Because… if you’re me, you don’t watch television and you don’t check the weather, so OF COURSE, it starts to rain while you are out. And so, you come home to find that the clothes had had just enough time to dry in order to help sop up the torrential downpour that came their way.

Fail.

Oh well, at least the clothes were multi-tasking this morning. Wet. Dry. Wet. Dry. And the weather too for that matter. Nice job, guys.

Little signs

Spring has SPRUNG!

At least it has here in the South.

It still being February, I had my reservations (as does all the frost bitten dead grass surrounding Mr Green Grass pictured here) that the warm weather would be here to stay. But this past week we haven't had a day below 60 degrees. And in truth, most of the days have been over 70.

I kid you not.

I expect that we'll have one or two cold spells before warmer weather is here to stay, but for the time being, we're loving it.

Big time.

We actually hit the beach on Friday (a bit windy, but still quite pleasant) and hosted my dear Joshua's 3rd birthday party outside yesterday morning.