Posted 5-27-06

My life, it seems, has become so dang busy I can't even keep up with it myself. I've not quite figured out how I can actually make it all happen in a single day as it's supposed to. Hopefully soon.

So... here are some photos of what's been happening with us lately. Dalton had a friend over last Thursday for a play date. They happened to notice the wild strawberries growing in the yard and both boys, being strawberry aficionados apparently, decided they were ripe for the picking. We got some fun photos of them on this adventure and we soon went inside to wash and eat the little red treasures.

After sitting down and tasting the first one, Dalton's friend remarks, "Dalton's Mommy? These are not strawberries. They look like strawberries, but they're not good so they can't be strawberries. They taste like grass."

To which Dalton promptly replied, "They are too strawberries, but they're wild strawberries so they taste wild! See! (Popping one tiny treasure into his mouth) Just different - kinda wild!"

Now God bless this child for helping his friend see that wild is sometimes just as tame as "domestic" and that we applaud the differences. (Not that my son actually knew this, or the other child didn't. We all know how amazingly intelligent and astute our children are right???)

So, on Tuesday of the following week, their school class went to a local farm for a field trip. We were fortunate enough to be able to pick strawberries to bring home at the end of our field trip. They had fields of cantaloupe, strawberries, tomatoes, green peppers, zuchinni and yellow squash. We saw their beef cows and a darling nest of killdeer eggs while on the tractor ride. (By the way, killdeer nests aren't really nests at all - they just lay their eggs on the ground and they're camoflauged with the terrain!)

Each child was able to take a DRIVE on the tractor and it was just a fun fun day all the way around.

Funny, the wild strawberries in my yard look nothing like the beautiful ripe strawberries in the fields!

So I leave you with a few thoughts. Our kids are a lot more astute than we think they are, even at 5. Enjoy the diversity of life. And remember, wild doesn't mean bad, it just means different! So try it wild! You never know - you just might like it!