strawberries!

My Grandma has made her own strawberry jam for as long as I can remember. It is one of the things that I look forward to when we are having a meal with her (especially since you get to eat it on her own homemade fresh rolls!). So this year I took inspiration from her to make my very own strawberry jam. I'm hoping it turns out half as good as hers!

So of course, this meant that we had to take a trip to the strawberry farm. Mark volunteered to stay home with Levi so that I could go with Isaiah. (Levi is at that hard stage where he is ALL OVER the place and refuses to stay put, even in a stroller - so leaving him home on events like this is almost a must! I'm sure he'll enjoy it more next year:) My dad joined us and away we went. We were impressed with the strawberries this year - they were so yummy - much better than last year's. Isaiah was also much more of a helper this time around, here is the post about our visit from last year.
Last year we couldn't keep him out of the port-a-potty. He did remember it when he saw it and we did have to make two potty stops while we were there -- much better than the 10+ last time!

They also allow you to eat the berries while you are picking them. I told Isaiah that I was going to "snitch" one. After I said this, Isaiah kept saying that he was going to snitch one every time he ate a berry. I think he thought he was being really sneaky! :)They have you start picking at a flag (where the last person left off) and then move the flag to where you stop. We had Isaiah go get our flag when we were done to move it. He took us literally and just got the orange flag part and not the wire part. haha, we had to go find another flag because the wire was missing!
As we were walking in, Isaiah got a glimpse of all the animals that they have at the farm. We stopped to look at the huge cage of bunnies, but then went on to pick strawberries. After we were done picking our berries (Isaiah and I picked 12.66 pounds!!), we visited the animals. Isaiah loved them. He couldn't stop watching the turkey say, "gobble, gobble" he tried to mimic it. He watched the lambs, goats and chickens and then he saw the little cows. He yells, "look mommy, they are REAL!" He was so surprised that they were "real" cows. He said it several times. Later that night, after both boys were asleep, I made my first batch of jam. Hooray for me! :)
I had promised Isaiah that he could help make jam so the next day we made more. Jayda was here so she got to help too!

First we cut up the strawberries and then used my chopper to make them into really small pieces.Then we cleaned the jars (we did things a little backwards:)
and mixed the strawberries with the sugar and jam packet...
and put it in the jam jars - that simple!

And of course, after the jam was made we had to have a little strawberry treat - strawberry shakes! (and yes, Isaiah is still in his jammies in the late afternoon when we were doing this!)Strawberry season is so fun!