I’ve come to realize in my ripe old age that I am the bringer of magic. It’s my big responsibility as *the aging matriarch* of the family. Do I sprinkle fairy dust on cardboard and it magically turns into castles? Well, sometimes but I’m more referring to the normal things like family dinners, seasonal traditions, candles and decorations and taking the family out and about to events and things that generally make good memories. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.

If it wasn’t for me we would all sit around on a Saturday doing nothing! Yes, sitting around in our pajamas wasting our lives away playing games on our phones until finally at about three in the afternoon when our stomachs would revolt in hunger and we would make easy-mac and then lounge the rest of the day on the couch still playing games on our phones. Pathetic really.

It is now my job to prevent that.

One of my favorite outings that prevents the pickeledge of brain via phone is to visit the farm near our house.  We had to boycott the farm during pumpkin season ever since Hello Kitty decided to make an appearance and our neighborhood turned into mayhem and chaos.

It was bad. Traffic for days and we couldn’t even walk to the farm because you had to make a reservation for your parking spot and if you didn’t make a reservation you couldn’t get in. So no fun walks to the farm and no Hello-Kitty-Goes-to-the-Farm swag for us.

But not anymore! The Hello Kitty craze has died down a little and the farm is back open for regular neighborly people like us! It’s not cheap though. They get you coming and going for tour tickets and Hello Kitty t-shirts and bags. I know I should have said no to the kids when they wanted shirts but I was a kid once too and I loooooooooooved Hello Kitty! Hello Kitty was our Pusheen! Remember those days?

Anyway, the kids loved the farm. We ate strawberries until we thought we would burst  and we almost forgot about using our phones. But that might be more because we are all on a new data management DIET lately BECAUSE THE KIDS HAVE USED IT ALL UP!!!  Yep. Between the two of them they used fifty percent of our plan up in ONE WEEK. So yeah, that’s gotta change. Three cheers for strawberry farms!