u pick

Our first visitors!

After a year of living relatively close to our Lundeen-Frost cousins, the girls had really been missing these two. They were so excited to have Heron and Azure here for a weekend!

Tiffany is the master organizer of fun, creative, local activities. She coordinated a trip to the coast south of Half Moon Bay for fresh berry picking. It was a day full of sunshine, sweet fruit, and lots of family fun!

Our first stop was the blackberry patch. We learned a trick about picking blackberries - when a black berry is ripe it will fall off in your fingers. If you have to pull, it's not ready. When we found the berries that fit this description, it was a truly life-changing experience! I've never tasted fruit so sweet and tender. The berries literally dissolved on my tongue. It was amazing.

The girls were very good at locating the "black" blackberries and Lili picked some of the best berries of the day!

After the blackberries, we drove across Highway 1 to the strawberry fields.

The strawberry fields were truly a magical experience. They were located right on the cliffs with the ocean crashing below us and the ocean breeze combined with the sweet scent of the strawberries to create the most tantalizing smell I've ever experienced!

The rule is that you can eat as many berries as you like while you are there picking, you just pay for what you take. It was a dream.

A view back against the hills of the coast. A sunny day on the Northern California coast is rare, and we were lucky to catch one. A perfect day for picking berries.

 

Dad showing Serelle how to choose a ripe strawberry. She especially liked to find the little tiny ones that may not have been quite ripe enough. She was a willing student and continued to help us pick almost as many perfect strawberries as she ate!

Can you even believe this is real? We just finished our last jar of fresh strawberry jam and are thinking it might be about time to repeat this family outing!

Thanks to T and Whit for planning such a wonderful day for us!