Strawberry Picking and New Friends

The strawberry farm is only three miles down the road. We drive past it often. My family has picked strawberries there every year since we moved down here. It's been a tradition since as long as I can remember. So today when I got up at 6:30 to get Annie and I ready for the 7:30 opening I was in high spirits. It was a beautiful day: warm, crisp, and sunny...perfect. I put Annie in the backpack and we rode the tractor to the fields. Annie loved it.



This year it's extra special (except for the sad part that my family isn't here to pick with me)
because we have just recently come to know the people who live on the strawberry farm.

It began in Lamaze class. Tiffany and I were both heavy with child and our due dates were very close. It ended up that Annie and Luke were born a month apart. Tiffany called me after my c-section but I lost her number and we thought that was that.

Then we met Tiffany and Jeff and saw Luke for the first time, randomly, in a restaurant. They said they had just moved from the strawberry farm duplex into a new house that Jeff built. A family had replaced them. Of five grown children, the two oldest sisters married two brothers and had children, and their younger three grown siblings live with them. The large family and Tiffany and Jeff became friends and the whole group started a home church together.

After we had gotten together with Tiffany and Jeff several times, they invited us to eat dinner with all their friends at the strawberry farm.



So we went last night. The house was full of children. Including the Russian family who came, there were 14 children including Annie and three other babies. I helped the women in the kitchen as the men talked in the living room. After dinner the guys played guitar and we swung on the porch swing as the stars came out.

I am grateful to meet this Christian family (four girls and one boy like my family) who lives so close so that Annie can grow up near children her age. They homeschool too which is an added blessing.

This morning after filling my basket I walked over to three of the kids sitting at their homemade lemonade stand. They had a toy cash register and sold me a cinnamon bun to support their compassion children in Africa and Asia. "Hi Melissa! Hi Annie! I recognized you from far off!" The oldest girl said.

It's nice to know your neighbors.



(This is Annie sleeping now, thoroughly exhausted from her hard work picking berries.)