Sunflower Fields & Blackberry Picking at the Beach

Yesterday, the girls and I went to a new place we’d never been to before. It’s a sunflower field (or several actually.) It was one of the prettiest places I’ve ever visited 🙂 It was so sunny and I couldn’t believe how many sunflowers there were. 🙂 They’re my favourite flower, so I guess I was always going to love it there. When we arrived, the girls were given bags for picking wildflowers and blackberries. The wildflowers were mostly gone, but they got some blackberries 🙂 The sunflowers were towering over us and there were fields and fields of them. The girls climbed up onto a viewing deck to see them all 🙂 I have a feeling it won’t be open for much longer since the sunflower season is almost over, but they were still lovely and the weather was scorching – water and sunglasses were definitely essential and thankfully my sister had lent us some 🙂 There was a den built for kids to play in that the girls loved, and we paused at the picnic tent for some shade and water. It seemed to be quite popular and I was surprised so many people knew about it. I just came across it online recently. We walked back to the car down a little lane filled with blackberry bushes, which the girls loved.

We have had a blackberry-filled couple of days. Today, I took the girls to a quiet coastal path with little rocky beaches along it. I loved the fact we barely saw any people there. It was very foggy and we couldn’t see across the water until the end of our walk 🙂 But there was something special about being at the beach in fog 🙂 We stopped on a rocky beach and the girls collected shells and rocks in their buckets. I collected some rocks for painting too. We had a snack on our picnic blanket and then we walked along the path. The girls insisted on stopping at another little beach with huge rocks on it. They climbed onto them and created walls out of smaller rocks. I like seeing them getting absorbed in something creative like that. I even got a chance to write a little bit in my journal before the requests for lunch at 10.30AM began 🙂

We found more blackberry bushes than we’ve ever seen anywhere before and the girls must have picked and eaten a hundred of them each 🙂 There’s something about picking their own food that makes kids much more interested in eating it 🙂 They always look happiest when they’re covered in blackberry stains too 🙂 We went for a longer walk to a fort and found a picnic table overlooking the sea. I finally gave in and let the girls have lunch at 11.30AM 🙂 It was peaceful sitting watching the sea and there were some men fishing too. The girls stole some paper from my journal so they could draw pictures while we were there 🙂

On the way back, we spotted some little rock towers someone had built and the girls wanted to make some of their own, so they collected stones to stack and that kept them entertained for a while 🙂 The girls continued to pick blackberries on our walk and then we stopped at a rocky beach so they could look in rock pools. They were determined to find a crab and they did, but sadly it was dead (which was probably for the best since they wanted it to move in to their bucket :))

After all our time by the sea, I made the girls some hot chocolate and I made myself a mocha 🙂 I attempted to clear stuff out while they practised hula-hooping in the garden 🙂 No matter how much walking and playing they do, it never seems to expend all their energy 🙂