Emma comes up with the best ideas!

Last night we went over to my dad's house for a while. He had made some chocolate dipped strawberries and we needed to keep the kids out from underfoot of the refrigerator repairman (who HAD to come on Sunday, much as we hate breaking the Sabbath, because stuff had to be cleared out of the fridge and freezer and I can't do that right now, and Sunday is the ONLY day Jeff is home.) So the girls and I went to my dad's while Jeff waited for, assisted, and paid the repairman (and put the food back afterwards.)

They played outside at first and picked lemons off my dad's tree (which is a Meyer dwarf, so it bears pretty much year-round-- right now there are blossoms, half-grown fruit, ripening fruit, and ripe fruit all on at the same time-- and it's low to the ground so little ones can pick lemons themselves.) They pretended to "cook" with them with the play kitchen, then Emma said she wanted to make lemonade. Okay. So we went in and asked my dad, who of course cleared a space and got stuff out for us. I washed and cut the lemons (11 of them-- Ems insisted on using ALL the lemons we had picked, luckily Meyer lemons aren't very tart!), and Emma used the electric juicer to juice most of them herself (I did the first half to show her how.) Bridey actually did three halves herself by the end, she thought it looked fun and wanted to do it too! Then I put some water and sugar in a pitcher and had them help stir it until dissolved, then we stirred in about 3 cups of lemon juice (most of it-- my dad saved the little extra for later use.) It turned out really delicious! I don't usually use that much lemon juice but it was really good! We had it with our dinner (which we had brought over) and Jeff had some too when he came over. Then we had dessert and then Jeff cleaned up while I rested, then we went home.

It wasn't actually that much work, and it was really fun. I have a feeling Emma's going to remember it for a long time. So I'm glad she had such a great idea!