Wild Blueberries, Bees, Sidewalk Chalk & Target!

Can you imaging how these four things would all go together early on a Saturday morning?  It would be our adventure in wild blueberry picking!  The morning started off great, we got up at the crack of dawn (as usual), ate fresh hard boiled eggs, homemade zucchini bread, & OJ for breakfast, go dressed in long pants (ironically to keep the bugs off!), grabbed a to go mug of green tea with locally made honey and off we go....

We met our friends Janelle and Athena (4) at Target.  Janelle is all about  Wild Edibles (check out her blog), so when she scouted a huge field of wild blueberries growing behind Target she invited us to join her to pick some. She was smart and brought us each a plastic cup with string tied to it to hang around our necks while we pick. "OK we are all set, lets start picking!"  We entered the path into the woods and found LOADS of sweet tiny blueberries...James was in his glory!

Until all of a sudden he started to SCREAM!  and CRY! I am sure you guest by the title that he got stung by a bee :(

I manged to comfort him and distract him and he calmed down rather quickly, when not 5 mins later Athena started to SCREAM! Only she was not calming down she was really hurt...it seems we had stumbled upon  a bees nest in the ground!!!  Poor Athena got stung 10 times in the legs!  Janelle, (being the calm quick thinking mama) ran her to the path and we got her pants off (covered in bees).  It just so happen that Janelle had just made some homemade toothpaste from here and brought me some to try...I ran to the car to get it to put on Athena's legs (it has baking soda in it, Janelle's mom says this is good for bee stings)

Mason stood quietly and still and just watched.

OK so we are calmed down, I try to get the bees out of Athena's pants (which we ended up leaving for now)....when you'll never guess...James starts screaming again! A bee was up his pants and stung his leg...we whipped his pants off and grabbed everything and ran out of the woods!

"I feel like I have been stung by a bee emotionally'-Janelle

back at the car....some music, pretzels, juice,  and a new dress for Athena.  Everyone is happy again.
but wait!...................................

James AGAIN starts to scream!  There is another one in his shirt (after 20 mins)...are you kidding?....Off goes the shirt and he is DONE!

We decided to go into Target to buy Guy a birthday present, as we are walking by Janelle and I are drooling over all the beautiful blueberries we are walking by......James runs up the little hill and starts calling us to see them and eats a bunch......Athena follows.....Mason "can we go to target now?" We go into Target and pick up a few things (no present), but we found a big bucket of sidewalk chalk....Janelle and I have an idea!

I parked my car sideways, opened the sliding door, put on  the Wayne From Maine CD (great kids music), we gave them instructions to stay inside the while parking lines and they went to work drawing with chalk while we picked wild blueberries on top of the little hill next to the parking lot! And Janelle's afraid of being known as the crazy lady around town!  eventually the kids joined us in the pick and we got about a keg cups full of berries!  (both kids are fine by the way..no allergies)

It ended just as good as it began, but it was a WILD day!

We plan on going back for more...WITHOUT the kids!