Blueberry Orchard

So a few weeks back, when stuff first started shutting down, there was a Rally for Tally event, that pushed people to order take-out from locally owned restaurants. We were out of town in Missouri still then, so we missed it. But I decided we’d do it on our own today, and specifically choose three local places to get all our meals from today. So we started out very early this morning picking up breakfast from Chi Chi’s Cafe, and then of course brought it back home to eat out on the patio.

On the left is two cheese pastries, and on the right is the Buenos Diaz bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich, which comes with the little crispy potato sticks. (It’s hard to tell, but under that top piece of sandwich is another piece of sandwich. You’re basically only seeing half the sandwich.) Plus I got an iced Cuban coffee. All three of us shared all of this, and everything was delicious!

After we finished breakfast, we loaded up and drove across town to Jubilee Orchards to go blueberry picking with the family! Megan and Bo brought the triplets, and Grammy and Papa also met us there. It was super foggy when we got there, but the sun came out and warmed everything up very quickly. And we had a great time!

Jeff’s parents were driving all day today to pick up two of their grandchildren to spend a few weeks here in Florida, so we stopped by their house to let their dogs out. After that. we headed to stop #2 on our local restaurant tour today, Florida Juice Company. On the left is the Pin-Pin (which was by far our favorite) and on the left is the Screamin’ Vegan (which was very tart & tangy and interesting).

The vegan one was supposed to be on sale, but he forgot and charged us full price, and he didn’t realize it until after we paid. He offered to refund the difference in cash, or give us a card for a free juice on our next visit. I thought that was a super nice thing to do, and I’m we took the free juice card for next time 😉

We both chose the Mar A Lago sandwich (which comes with chips and your choice of nacho cheese or hummus), and it was a really good sandwich. I liked it, but Jeff loved it.

I got Emerson down for her nap after lunch, around 1:20. Jeff was already asleep in the six minutes it took for her lullabies, so I laid down too. I’m not so good at naps though, so after laying there for an hour, just restlessly in & out of sleep, I got up. I wrote the first half of this blog, looked up multiple blueberry recipes, and even went to Publix, all before those two woke up! They both slept for like 3.5 hours! Blueberry picking wore them out!

We made a blueberry smoothie for a late afternoon snack (it wasn’t that great, I’ll have to tweak it the next time), and received a package of homemade masks from my mom’s best friend, who we call Aunt Jane!

Oh and I also gave Emerson the two temporary tattoos that she requested. Look how happy she is about it!

We called and ordered our dinner, and then we prepped an overnight blueberry-lemon French toast casserole for tomorrow’s breakfast, before heading out to pick up our food.

We ordered dinner from Bahn Thai, which I have only had once before, like five or six years ago. We got meal suggestions from my friend Sara (when she told me the one I had been eyeing was her favorite, that helped me decide to go for it), and added an order of crab rangoon.

I got the spicy basil chicken (mild) with jasmine rice (bottom) and Jeff got the pad Thai (also mild), and those crab rangoon stole the show with their delicious plum sauce. But that basil chicken was soooo good! I loved it! We both only ate half of our meals, because they were huge, so we’ll have it for leftovers for lunch or dinner tomorrow.

Emerson requested we sit in the front yard, and we thought it sounded like a great idea. I had a whole lemon leftover from zesting it for the breakfast casserole, so this lemon water was deliciously refreshing. And it turns out Emerson loved it too. She kept very sweetly asking me for me more sips.

She was also very sweetly reading Madeline to herself. With every page flip, she would say, “she brushed her teeth and went to bed and said woo-hoo and what’s wrong? And Madeline.” It was adorable and hilarious.

She had some tiny little bite brownies for her bedtime dessert snack, and we read about Noah’s ark in her bedtime Bible stories book.

She was super sweet at bedtime, and gave me like 30 kisses before laying her head down for lullabies. Today was a GREAT day, and everything was just so nice! We got to spend some time with our family (social distance style in the great outdoors), eat some amazing food, and just enjoy a nice Saturday. Very thankful for days like today!