Rose used to be an extremely picky eater. Now, she is not just a normal eater, she is an adventurous eater. I put sardines, which she loves, in the adventurous category. But recently, she has come to love the normal food, strawberries. I thought I would support that by taking her strawberry picking. Plus, I'm all about cramming a million activities into summer.

And we managed to cram it in between swimming and shopping. As my sister pointed out, we used to have to devote an entire day to adventures like this. My sister, nieces, and mom came to, so there were seven of us in the minivan. I brought a great book on cd, The Great Cake Mystery, Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case. It's the Lady's Number One Detective as a child. It kept us all rapt, and the 45 minute drive was no problem, well that and my sister drove.

I was worried that David might throw berries, stomp on plants, or whine the whole time. Well, I'm obviously not keeping up with his development. He was great. He listened carefully to my instructions on how to pick and what to pick, and then he picked. He and I made a game of finding 30 berries in one spot before moving on. We had a lovely time. Rose, on the other hand, got very competitive and pouty about how many berries she had picked.

We survived that crisis, but the next one was way worse. We finished our story shortly after getting in the car, but I was ready with Bill Harley stories stored on my iphone. Except my iphone didn't work. A water bottle had spilled near it and gotten water in the speakers. No one could hear the story, so they are started squabbling and playing with the air ducts. How does Mommy feel about hot tired children squabbling in the car? Not creative enough to come up with a song, story, or puzzle of my own. Math problems, I should have given them all math problems. Luckily, the speakers dried out, the story could be heard, and everyone was happy.

John made strawberry shortcake, and we were all very happy though David skipped the strawberry part.