Cherry Pickin'

In spite of going to bed early last night, I did not sleep well. So I decided to take a nap with Ethan today. Just as I was waking up, I hear a knock at the door. It's really not a usual thing for people to visit us, so I figured I would just ignore it since I wasn't exactly presentable. If it was a friend, they would get back with me, and if it was a salesman, so much the better. Well, the person just kept knocking, and it woke Ethan up. So I finally took our groggy selves to the door. I found two bicyclists parked on our lawn picking cherries. The older one saw me, apologized for waking us up, and then asked if they could possibly come back to pick a bucket of cherries. I was rather taken aback by this forwardness and wasn't quite sure how to answer him. I told him we were going to pick them tonight, but I supposed if there were any left that he could reach he could have some. I concluded that it was a very good thing we were picking the cherries for Family Home Evening, because otherwise whatever the birds didn't get to would be picked off by strange people passing by!

Our cherry tree is loaded this year, which is nice because we didn't get any the previous two years. It's a little frustrating to see the branches covered in cherries way up high, past the reach of a ladder or even a climb. Even so, there were plenty that we could reach. Yum! We are going to try drying some this year since we don't seem to eat the bottled ones very much.

This is just before we started picking. As you can see, Ethan got a little spoiled today. Our friends the Murrays were getting rid of a bunch of toys, and they stopped by to see if we wanted any of them. They certainly helped keep him entertained while we were busy! Grandma watched Ethan for us, switch out bags, and gathered cherries we dropped.

 Ethan thought it was pretty cool to see us way up high, and he had a lot of fun eating the cherries and playing with grandma. I think we'll be seeing a number of pits in his diaper soon, though. . .

 I spent quite a while getting all the cherries I could reach from the roof. I think the back of my legs probably got a pretty good tan. ;)

 Doug's station was on the ladder. He told us stories of his parent's orchard.

 And Terral was our monkey for the day. :) No surprise there.

It feels good to have the majority of the picking done. Now we just have to take care of the fruit! Somehow I don't think we'll have any problem getting rid of the excess. . .