Back to Life, Back to Reality

Monday morning, the vacation is over, camp is finished, real life begins again.  The big event is that Dave started work again after 4 months on short-term disability.  Its been a long road and he still is recovering but hopefully going back to work will be good for him.  I know that he wants to get working again and we are praying that he will be okay.

As much as we appreciate his job and how good they have been to him, he is in a high-stress field with long hours.  He is starting back right as things will be picking up.  That's good because it means he will have work to do and will definitely be needed.  It's not so good because he might have too much to do which could be a challenge as well.  We will just have to see how it goes and offer lots of prayers.

In the meantime, the girls and I have the job of finishing up summer.  Obviously, Dave got the short end of the stick on this.

One thing I definitely wanted to do was go blueberry picking.  We weren't able to go the last couple of years so I made sure we did this year.  I was even optimistic about how many pounds we would pick considering my kids are older and should be able to do more.  Plus both my girls brought friends so I thought that might help too.

In the end, we picked 19lbs.  6lbs. went home with friends which left us with 13 lbs.  Honestly, we probably could have done better.  This year, the weather was perfect for picking, not hot or humid just a nice 80 degrees.  Plus the blueberry crop was very strong which made for lots of berries and easier picking.  So what was our problem?  Number one, Paige apparently is not old enough to be more helpful.  After less than an hour of picking she and her friend started complaining about being hot and having heat stroke, etc.  Really?  I got after them a little for being wimps, but when you have someone else's kid how demanding can you really be?  They both only picked 2 lbs each.  To give you perspective I picked 9 lbs in the same amount of time.

Ashley picked about 4 lbs and didn't have any endurance problems, just common sense problems.  I didn't stay right with her and her friend because I had the little girls to keep an eye on.  Ashley and her friend ended up picking in the wrong direction and went in an area that had already been picked through the day before which equalled finding less berries.  Oh well.  One year we will get it all figured out.   13 lbs. of blueberries is a lot.  I learned that as I had to clean and freeze them all!

We also did a little retail therapy at the mall and have had a full house as I have been babysitting Paige's friend.