Sunday, April 6, 2014

Sweet Berry Farms

For a few weeks now I've had a craving for pie. And I read about a great little restaurant not far from here in Marble Falls that is supposed to have great pie. So I could not get it out of my mind. I could have made my own pie but the pictures of the pie at the Bluebonnet Café just looked too good. I became obsessed. By the pie.

I thought that driving an hour away from home for a piece of pie was a little over the top. So then I decided to plan a whole fun filled family day around this pie. Luckily, there is a cute little farm right near the pie place that just happens to grow strawberries and blackberries in the spring. And they let you come out and pay an enormous amount of money to pick your own berries and take them home.
Did I mention this farm is very close to the pie place?
So I told the hubby and the kiddos that we were going to go pick strawberries because it would be SO MUCH FUN! And then on our way home we could stop and have lunch at the Bluebonnet Café because I heard it was good. Oh, and they have pie there so maybe we could get a piece for dessert. See how I roll?

We set out early in the morning to get there before the masses showed up to pay their enormous amounts of money to pick their own strawberries.

 
See those boxes? They cost .50 cents. But we can bring em back and reuse them whenever we want. I grabbed a box for Jake to fill, a box for Emma to fill and a box for Mike and I to fill. Then as we turned to head out to the fields I asked the man at the counter about how much it would cost to fill one basket. He said "oh, about $18." So I put mine and Mike's basket back and told the kids to only fill their baskets halfway full. Seriously.
 
 
Here is little Emma Mae with her half full box of strawberries that she and Mike worked very hard at collecting. You may notice she is wearing a summer dress on what looks to be a cold day. Let me assure you that she really believes she is Elsa from Frozen and that the cold doesn't bother her anyway. And you know what? She did not complain about the weather one bit so who am I to argue?
 
 
Here is Jake holding up one of the three strawberries he managed to pick in our time at the farm. I don't see manual labor in this child's future. He did a whole lot of standing around with his hands in his pockets complaining about the cold and wishing he had worn socks. Kind of reminded me of every single time I ask him to pick up his mess at the house.  Also, he said he didn't know which berries to pick. I was all, "um, the red ones that are all over the place out here?" He was way more interested in getting to the bounce pad we had to pay $2.50 per kid for that allowed them to jump for exactly 8 minutes.
 

 
They also enjoyed the four minute train ride we bought them for another $2.50 per kid.
 
 
They fed goats. For only .25 cents a kid. That was a steal. These kids love feeding goats. And they got to pet a horse for free.
 

 
All in all we had a good day at the farm!
 
 
I decided to post this picture so you all would not think for some reason that I have it all together and am one of those precious perfect blogger moms. I look worn out! When I saw my roots in this picture today it took me less than four hours to get out a box of hair color to hide that gray. Goodness! And trust me, if I had a couple thousand dollars lying around that didn't have a purpose I would go straight to the Botox store and fill in those wrinkles. Even though my sweet hubby lies and says he loves them.
 
 
 
Anyhow. We left the farm and headed out to the Bluebonnet in great anticipation of some lunch and pie. I didn't even mind the twenty minute wait in the line out the door to get a table. Mike asked me if I was sure I wanted to wait and I was like, "excuse me, have we met? There is pie inside this place that I must get to." Unfortunately, I ate so much chicken fried steak and Mike had so many ribs that neither one of us could think about eating pie. So we bought some to go. One piece of pecan, one piece of lemon cream and one piece of chocolate cream. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the pie. It was really good. And totally worth the $33 dollars we spent at the strawberry farm and the $33 dollars we spent on lunch to get it. Oh, we are surely going back in May for blackberry picking!