Picking Strawberries & Making Jam.

This week, the school my kids go to are celebrating the teachers that work there. My husband and I are very thankful for the teachers that our kids have and have had in past years. We are thankful for the positive impact they are having on our kid's lives. To help mold them and shape their characters. We're thankful for the love they give to our kids. And since it's teacher appreciation week at their school, we wanted to do something for them to let them know how much they mean to us.

I thought about giving the teachers each a gift card. Everyone can use one of those. But I wanted to give them something that the kids had helped with as well. So after school on Monday, we drove to the strawberry field and our family picked three stock pots full of fresh strawberries. That's a lot of strawberries. That's a lot of jam. So far I've made fourteen jars of jam and I have one full stock pot of fresh berries left.

Yes, we're leaving the country in a couple months. Yes, I realize that over a dozen jars of jam will not be consumed by our family during that time frame. But jars of homemade jam make wonderful gifts for friends that we won't be seeing for a long time.

As we were picking strawberries as a family, we talked about how we had picked strawberries this last year as well. And we wondered if they have pick your own strawberry farms in Hong Kong. Although it's so easy to be consumed with packing and selling and focusing on the future, I have to remind myself that it is also very important {not just for myself, but also for the kids} to be present here in South Carolina as well. We need to continue making memories in our every day.