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One for me. One for the basket. One for me....

I can't help it, but every time the 4th of July rolls around, the sound of people setting off fireworks in the neighborhood during "rehearsals" makes me cringe.

I think about hands blowing off.

You know, what happens when you play with explosives.

I could never imagine setting off firecrackers without the presence of some kind of remote control device and a nearby bomb shelter to activate it from within. Call me a chicken. But at least I'll be a chicken with all her appendages.

The 4th of July has been a non-holiday for us for the last 2 years, mainly because Jolie can't stay up late enough to watch fireworks outside and even if she were, I'd wager that the loudness of it all would make fireworks fall into the same category of the "GAH GOOM" (a.k.a. Scary Loud Sucking Monster). Let's face it, we can barely stay up for fireworks anymore, as sad as that sounds. That's what you get when your child wakes up around 6-6:30 am every single day.

For the love of God, whatever happened to sleeping in?

Well, this morning, we took advantage of our perma-early wake-up time to have some serious family holiday quality time.

We drove about 30-40 minutes into the countryside to an orchard to pick blueberries.

Talk about good, clean, fun.

We got there, parked, and were taken by a tractor pulling a shuttle wagon (possibly Jolie's favorite part of the day) to the blueberry fields where we were assigned (serious organizational skills in this orchard) plants that were ours for the picking. These were big, fat, sweet (um, just tried one- er- a couple) blueberries that made the grocery store ones look sickly. Even Jolie was able to pick off the ripe ones by herself (and helping herself to possibly a greater amount than the ones she actually deposited in the basket.)

The weather was perfect, still slightly cool in the morning breeze, and after we wrapped up, visited their orchard market full of freshly baked pies and farm-fresh produce, and drove home, we still had time to make blueberry pancakes for brunch from scratch before it was time for Jolie's nap.

Now, to look for blueberry dessert recipes that I can bring to the neighborhood cookout tonight...we may actually turn blue by the end of this week.

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