Oh, Poteet, it's not so sweet...

In these parts, one of the largest and oldest festivals around is called the Poteet Strawberry Festival. HEB even makes an ice cream about this time of year that is made w/ Poteet strawberries. It's THAT famous. Well, one of the things we really wanted to do this year was go to it. I mean, what can be anything but great about a festival that honors one of our favorite fruits, or foods for that matter. We figured there would be lots and lots of yummy strawberries to taste. So, we put it on our calendar. It was last weekend, and we planned on heading out there on Saturday to enjoy some of the festivities. When we checked the website, we were amazed at how huge this thing is, but we were looking forward to going and doing some fun things. Well, Friday night, at about 7, Michael read in the paper that admission was FREE on Friday night! How did I miss that???? We'd had an exhausting day doing things away from the house, but the idea of saving $40 in admission fees alone was enough to propel us into high gear getting ready and hitting the road for the 35-40 minute trip to Poteet. When we were about 10 miles out of Poteet (a town of about 3000 people), we started seeing stands set up to sell strawberry shortcake, chocolate covered strawberries, the usual festival fare of smoked turkey legs as well as tacos and fajitas. We thought that we interesting until about 4 miles away from the festival we saw the reason for their existence....we saw nothing but tailights...bumper to bumper traffic at 8pm at night on the way to the Poteet Strawberry Festival. We could see the ferris wheel and other lights from the festival so we knew this was festival traffic, but Michael estimated that we were probably 4 miles from where we PARK, and then would probably have a hefty walk after that. OK, change of plans!! We turned around and found a stand (this stand was actually a church) serving tacos, and gorditas...
Had a quick bite here...then headed to...

Strawberry shortcake. Michael and the boys said it was ok. The cake was supposedly good, but the strawberries were FROZEN! Go figure, I mean we've crossed 3 counties to take Fresh, famous Poteet strawberries and we get FROZEN and paid way too much for it!!

Then right down the road, I saw a fresh fruit stand where they were selling watermelon, pineapple and strawberries. I thought this would be great, BUT the produce was overpriced, and the strawberries (which didn't even look good) were from MEXICO! Not feeling so good about eating those! I'm wondering if the strawberries at the festival are actually from Poteet. Maybe I'm just naive!

Here's Jeffrey w/ a pineapple. Sorry about the blur!

The boys didn't mind at all turning around and going home. They got food! AND they watched a movie the whole way there and back. It was almost like Michael and I were on a date b/c we didn't hear from the boys the whole time. We had a complete conversation!! Nice!!!!!

We pulled into the garage and I was getting out and reached for my purse. It wasn't there. I asked the boys if they could see it. Jeremy said "Mom, did you get it out of the seat at the fajita place?" I didn't remember until that point that I had taken my purse out of the car. Major sinking feeling!! We came inside and called my cell phone, but no one answered. Then we looked on the internet for the number of the church and called, but no answer. Let me tell you, we were SOOOOOO glad that we'd stopped at the church, b/c they at least had a phone and a higher chance that my purse wasn't stolen. Well, my sweet and wonderful husband got back in the car and drove BACK to Poteet. Right after he left, the church called back (thank goodness for Caller ID!!), I explained what happened and they checked outside. My purse was still there!! They held onto it and Michael picked it up about 10:15 and got home about 11:00. Man, he's good to me!!

While he was gone, the boys and I got ready for bed and did our family devotional/family meeting that we try and do each night. Josiah didn't last. He fell asleep....

Seriously, JUST LIKE THAT!! He was even snoring! I had to get a picture of it or he wouldn't have believed it!! Thankfully, this wasn't Michael at the steering wheel!! :-)