Strawberry Pick'n & Weekend Fun

Last weekend, we went to a local farm and picked our own strawberries.  We went with our friends Jonathan and Candace and had a fun time! We look forward to next year when Bean can actually participate in the process!

(We did our Strawberry picking at Suter's Farm.  They supplied the buckets, and we got to fill them with delicious strawberries for $7.50! We were confused at first as to which lanes we were told to pick in.  We figured it out and got to work.)

(We weren't sure how it was going to work with Bean, so we just brought her big stroller since it shades her the best.  We parked her nearby and would check on her as we picked.  We could hear her babbling from our row and she had a good time just watching all the people.)

(Hi Bean!)

(Don't let the minimal amount of strawberries in the bucket fool you, we left with a full gallon bucket! We were probably out there 30 minutes or so.  The weather was beautiful!)

So what did I do with all those strawberries??  About half of them were sliced, sugared, and frozen.  The other half was eaten throughout the week and used to make strawberry shortcake cupcakes! My very good friend Sara has her own cupcake business (Sara's Sweets) and I was nervous to make cupcakes for a gathering with our friends, but I did it anyway! Steve loved the cupcakes.  I thought they were good, but I'd tweak the recipe a little bit for next time.

(I had to make the batter, pour half in the cups, then put in strawberries, then the other half of the batter on top.  The batter was really thick and didn't pour over the strawberries like I had hoped - something I'd tweak for next time!)

(Yum-o!  I sent this picture to my cupcake friend before bringing them to the gathering.  She said I needed to work on the icing, haha - I  cheated and just used redi-whip in the can.  I told her I couldn't make a perfect cupcake, then I'd steal her business!)

Bonus Photos:

(I brought the cupcakes to our small group picnic.  While there, Sara wanted to go down the slide and used Bean as a rouse to go down it.)

(Bean's first slide experience!  No tears means it was a success!  I thought the slide looked super tall, so Sara is just going to have to take Bean to the park and slide so I don't have to freak out over its height.)

Around Lima

Steve and I have really gotten involved with our new home city.  We've found a church that we are planning on joining and have already begun to make deep relationships with people in our Sunday school class and plan on attending a Bible study in the next couple of weeks.  I am also joining a woman's Bible study through a friend from the class.

We've also been a kick learning about Lima and its history.  Earlier in the year, we visited the Lima City Museum and got to see key pieces from Lima's history (like a locomotive and the jail cell Dillinger broke out of).  Just a few weeks ago, we went on a "Spooky Lantern Tour" and got to walk around downtown Lima with a tour guide that shared a lot of history from the city (most of the stories tended to focus on mysterious deaths and supposed hauntings -- hence the "spooky").

While on the tour, we got to go into some old buildings in the downtown area and here about their history.  One building used to be an old bowling alley and now has legal offices.  Our favorite building was the Lima Trust building.  It was built back in the 20s and used to be a busy bank.  Now, the building is pretty much condemned and undergoing slow reconstruction.

(Inside the Lima Trust building. You can see all the teller windows around the room.  The stain glass in the background shows the foundations of lima -- agriculture, oil, ect.)

(Here's a close up of the teller window, above each one had specific titles, like this one says "Per Loans".  And through the teller window you can see the old bank vault.  We actually got to walk around and go inside it -- kind of creepy!)

It was pretty cold when we went on the tour.  We knew it would be and I had even brought hot apple cider and coca with us!  It was neat to get to hear the stories and try to imagine downtown Lima back during its bustling days.  

Halloween in Lima was quite different than what I am used to.  The NW Ohio area had structured days when trick-or-treating was allowed.  So we had the pleasure of passing out candy to trick-or-treaters the Thursday before Halloween -- kind of bizarre.  And the week before that, we went to a Halloween party!

(Can you guess who we are???  There was some confusion on Steve's character which became very comical.  People would sing the theme song for the character he was mistaken for.  At the end of the night, when we left Steve went on a rant about how he in no way looked like the other character -- it was funny!)