Battle Point and Blackberries

This week the kids and I took our annual summer adventure to Bainbridge Island.  It's always at the top of the kids' lists of places to go.  This year we met up with my aunt, Eileen, at Battle Point Park.  It's a large park with a lot going on and I'm pretty sure that if I lived on the island, I would spend a lot of time there.

It has a great playground (similar to the one at St. Edwards).  The playground was not crowded at all.  Miracle of miracles, all three kids even played together!

We walked around the park with a goal of seeing one of the ponds.  The park has trails (both paved and not).  Along the way we found some good blackberry picking.  Aunt Eileen thought ahead and had buckets ready for picking.

Aunt Eileen is camoflagued.  I love how Linus is peeking out through the bushes.

We headed back to Aunt Eileen's for lunch.  Her house is always exciting.  There are literally thousands of gnomes, cool workshops, and a large garden.

The kids took it upon themselves to harvest zucchini and blueberries from the garden.  We picked more blackberries.  While I hung out with my aunt, the kids found my Uncle Duane in the garage.  They were excited about the motorcycles.  Linus has big plans.

Linus is singing, "He'll be driving 6 black horses when he comes."  I'm pretty sure he was thinking of the 4 black horsemen of the apocalypse.

We finished off our day at Mora Ice Cream while waiting to take the Kingston ferry home.  Wow.  It may honestly be some of the best ice cream I have ever had and that is seriously saying something.  

Robin, in true Robin form, only ate a few bites but managed to get it all over his seatbelt and face.  I was a good mom and helped him eat his ice cream.

The kids had a great time entertaining themselves.  I love the summer magic of Bainbridge Island.

Today I invited my mom and sister over to make blackberry jelly and offload some zucchini on them.  During childhood August meant an abundance of zucchini, blackberry picking on Bainbridge, and canning blackberry jelly.  

While we didn't do full on canning, we did make some excellent jelly.

Of course Linus had to pretend he was bleeding.  Grandma thought this was hilarious.

If you haven't made jelly.  Don't be scared.  I just followed the recipe on the pectin container to get me started.  I did replace half the white sugar with brown and added in 3/4 tsp allspice.  The result is awesome, cobbler tasting jelly.

These are the types of days I hope my kids remember when they look back on their childhood.  

**Full disclosure, I hope they don't remember yesterday when they fought non-stop and I thought I was going to lose my mind.