See what I did there? In the title? A-MAZE-ing. Sorry about that, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

With several pick-your-own places within a couple miles of our house and a field of sunflowers the next town over we’ve never made the drive out to Lyman Orchards before last weekend. We planned to just go for the sunflowers but ended up having breakfast (giant apple cinnamon cream cheese bearclaw NOM NOM) and blueberry picking too. The kids loved the maze and would have stayed “lost” in it all day if we let them. And then Caroline ate her body weight in blueberries right off the bush. I would have felt bad about how many we didn’t pay for, except when we carried our GIANT pail of blueberries up to get weighed our total was $5. Best deal ever. We’re definitely going back for apples and pears – the views alone are worth the drive.

I actually had to DECREASE the color saturation on these pictures, because the flowers were so yellow and the sky was so blue it hurt my eyes. Real life, how can you be so gorgeous?!

Lyman Orchards offered free maze tickets to several Connecticut bloggers and I was lucky enough to score them for our family, but no compensation was received and we paid for our food and blueberries.  The sunflower maze runs until August 25th and I highly recommend it!

Every once in a while we get a day together as a family where we DON’T have anything planned but still manage to get ourselves out of the house and into the real world. It’s incredibly rare and easy to scare away if I start saying things like “Have you heard about this place in Maine?” or “I found out about this beach down I-95…” or “SHOPPING”. If I can balance my desire to do ALL THE THINGS with my hard-working husband’s desire to do NONE OF THE THINGS we get a unicorn day.  The trick is…this was all in town. We never went more than 3 miles from our house.

It’s amazing we’ve managed to find enough balance in the past 9 years to stay married. Nine years (and one day) and two gingers and more perfect days to come.

Warning: One bazillion photos to follow.

I love this life <3

Our Seaport membership lapsed last month, even though I’ve been planning to renew since March. I even went into the office to do it, but got distracted by the free lemonade and coffee and keeping my children from destroying the antique furniture.

I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll just wait until next summer to renew, since they close for part of the winter anyway. But we drove past last week and Evan started shouting “I WANT TO SEE MY BOATS! I LOVE BOATS! I NEED THE BOATS!” and Caroline cried. I told them we were going to get ice cream and they still insisted they wanted BOATS instead. (I threw in the playground and they acquiesced, but only because I promised the Seaport another day.)  Then I found these in June’s photo file when I was transferring it over to the external storage. I don’t think I can miss the rest of the summer and fall at the Seaport.

Besides, Chowder Days are in October and only crazy people who hate deliciousness miss Chowder Days.

p.s. We left Evan’s hat on Long Island earlier this summer. I really need to get it back.