Strawberry Days 2008

So my mom decided a few years ago that she needed to start up some new family traditions. One of those she wanted to start was an annual "Strawberry Days" celebration. She planted loads of strawberry plants intending the whole family to get together and pick them sometime in August every year. Well, there have never been many strawberries to pick, either because they don't grow fast enough because it's too cold, or the deer eat most of the plants. This year, she decided she had to have SOMETHING there that had to do with strawberries, so this was what she came up with...


Ella REALLY loved the chocolate strawberries. She kept picking up new ones just to lick the chocolate off.



Mostly Strawberry Days means getting together and hanging out doing a whole lot of nothing. I wish we had gotten a picture of everyone on their respective laptops, it was pretty funny. I think we figured out there were no less than eight laptops in the house while we were all there.



The latest Spaulding family photo. Take a close look at Ella's face--she looks like she's mad at the camera. Leo has the right idea, he decided to hide in the shadows to protect his eyes.



Matt and Deneal had a big announcement. They had Ashton unzip his hoodie with a big reveal... Deneal is due in March :D



A bunch of us went over into Blackhawk to do some shooting on Labor Day. Tom and I finally got to shoot a muzzle loader. Isn't that smoke cool?










We took Devin's projector outside and watched a movie on the side of the house. The movie wasn't one any of us will probably ever see again, but it was a lot of fun being out there. The next morning, the kids took all the pillows and blankets we had taken outside and piled them up to jump in. Ella especially loved playing with Ashton; they got along really well.



Here are Ashton and Ella feeding one of Mom's baby goats. You can't see it so much in this picture, but Ashton is a bit nervous of the goat, almost as much as he is with dogs. He keeps backing away like it's going to bite off a finger or something.