Good morning and happy last weekend of September!

We have an event-filled weekend and a packed newsletter full of details, so make sure to read it!

So far, it’s looking like the rain will clear up in time to enjoy all the fun.

This week we transition to October and fingers crossed that some cooler weather comes with it. It’s going to be a great month with lots of opportunity for family fun. Check out the October Catalog Preview from Summerville Parks & Rec which includes camps over fall break that are great for school aged kids.

Looking to buy or sell your house?

Ernest Govan is a Palmetto Parents Preferred Partner and our go-to realtor for the Summerville and Charleston area. We bought our house from him, my brother and his wife bought their house from him, and my parents bought their house from him! He’s communicative, patient, and not pushy. Need to buy, sell, or invest? Look no further. Email The Dream Maker now.

If you haven’t yet, consider joining the Palmetto Parents Community to chat with fellow parents in real time! It’s been a great to get recommendations from one another and getting to know the community more. We’ll be doing an IRL meet up soon, with details announced in the community group.

And if you want to manifest fall weather by doing all the fall things and create fun memories with your family, check out our Palmetto Parents Fall Bingo Board.

The $50 gift card prize was already claimed, but this is still a great tool to use with your family to spend meaningful time together. You can make a motivating prize for your family like a movie night, ice cream night, etc. when you get Bingo to add some extra motivation.

While other local markets are winding down for the season, one is just starting up! The Summer’s Corner Farmers Market is kicking off their fall/winter markets this Sunday, September 29th from 12-3pm. There will be over fifty vendors there with fruit and veggies, baked goods, jewelry, candles, and much more. There will be seven food trucks there including Chow Bella, Big Daddy Loco, City Sliders, Ma’s Gourmet Kettle Corn, Sno Biz of Summerville, Edisto Coffee, and Uncle Chuck’s Boiled Peanuts. The band Band of Brothers (Summer’s Corner locals) will be performing. And what’s super fun about this market is that they will have a free kids zone including:

Summer’s Corner will host additional markets at the end of October (with a Halloween theme) and the beginning of December. Further details will be announced about their events on social media. We’ve gone to the Summer’s Corner markets before and really enjoyed ourselves and were impressed with all the vendors!

If your family hasn’t spent a Saturday morning walking around the Summerville Farmers Market, it’s definitely worth doing.

We love to get our son a 25-cent honey stick at Smith’s Bee Farm stand and stock up on local honey and fruit — and sometimes a bouquet of flowers. There’s a wide variety of local businesses and artists selling their goods, and it’s always fun to support local businesses. The thing we loved most this summer were the blackberries from Cypress Hill Farm.

The farmers market downtown Summerville runs through November so there’s still plenty of opportunity to stop by and it’s even better in the cooler weather.

Summerville hours are 8am-1pm on Saturdays and it’s located in the First Citizens Bank parking lot behind Summerville Town Hall at 200 South Main Street.

Summerville starts prepping it’s Christmas lights downtown in September. I thought I saw a crew working on the lights and this post confirmed I was right. It’s never too early to prep for the winter holidays for Summerville Parks & Rec.

Coming up this weekend we have three unique seasonal events! It will be hard for us to decide which ones we want to go to.

Here’s the weekend line up:

This Friday from 6-9pm you can come celebrate Hispanic Heritage month with music, food, and over 30 vendors celebrating hispanic culture. From 6-6:30 and 8-9 you can listen to Latin Grooves by DJ Luigi. From 6:30-7 Chamber Music Charleston String Quartet Music of South America will be performing. Then from 7-8 there will be tango & salsa dances and lessons with Luz & Jose.

Food vendors at the event include:

This Saturday from 12-3pm, Summerville Parks & Rec is hosting its first annual Harvest Festival. It was originally slated to be at Wassamassaw Park, but the location changed to Gahagan Park which can better accommodate the crowd that is anticipated and some of the rain from Thursday and Friday.

This event will have family friendly games and activities, as well as food trucks to celebrate fall in Summerville. It’s an event welcoming all ages, with music, food, and plenty do to.

Vendors and activities:

Many of us are interested in apple picking, but sometimes it’s not realistic to haul the family to the upstate to enjoy the fall apple experience. This weekend, we’re in luck because Summerville’s Jedburg Junction is bringing in fresh apples from Holt Orchard in Henderson, NC for their 4th annual Apple Festival. Purchase apples, enjoy live music and performances, and eat with local vendors. There will be a variety of apple inspired goods like apple cider donuts. See the graphic above for the hours and location.

Daniel has been to Frothy Beard Off World a number of times with friends.

He’s always had a good experience and loves the Star Wars themed ambience, but we haven’t necessarily thought of it as a place for the family. But when he discovered he could get a very large amount of gourmet food at a low price on Tuesday nights, we decided to try it out with the family.

Tuesday nights are burger night at Frothy Beard, which means you get $5 off burgers making a large burger and side around $10 (which let’s be real… in this economy is a pretty good deal).

We shared some food between the three of us for only $28. 😱

For September they featured the Peanut Butter Bacon Jam Burger 🤤 (shown above) which includes smoked gouda, bacon, jalapeño bacon jam, and peanut butter sauce with actual peanuts. Sounds questionable, but it is absolutely delicious. If you’d choose peanut butter as the one food you’d eat every day for the rest of your life like me, you need to go try it out. Unfortunately it’s a September special so go get it while you still can!

Next month’s burger special will be a Kimchi burger.

Going early on a Tuesday was a great experience for our family. There was a lot of seating available and our son had a blast playing a couple rounds on the pinball machines. While we were there a number of families came in and the kids all enjoyed the arcade games.

Beyond burger night, Frothy Beard has a number of other weekly specials and activities including:

Coming soon they have Oktoberfest on Saturday, October 5th with food specials to celebrate.

And if you’re looking for something for your little one to snack on that’s a little less frothy, check out Little Bellies! We get paid every time someone clicks the link below so check it out — daycare’s expensive. 🤣

Our Yoghurt Pick-Me Sticks from 10+ months bring new adventures in taste, shapes and textures to help promote independence, expand palate and aid motor skill progression, such as pincer grasp, hand-eye coordination, chewing and swallowing.

Learn more about Little Bellies

In the challenges of parenthood it can be easy to feel alone and like you are the only one going through your situation.

This past week, I’ve had numerous reminders that there are so many people going through the same thing, and somehow that makes the hardship that much easier and gives me the strength to carry on in the midst of the challenges.

Whether it’s seeing another parent trying to calm down their kid’s grocery store tantrum or texting a friend in the midst of simultaneous sleepless nights with restless kiddos, it helps me know that we are not unique or alone, we are in the trenches of the beautiful chaos of parenthood together.

This week I was at a splash pad and there was another mom there with her toddler son and baby boy, similar in age to my sons. As hunger and tiredness started creeping in on the kids, we both dealt with crying, hungry babies while the toddlers struggled to listen to instructions and failed to resist the urge to poke and prod their distressed baby brothers. While I don’t wish challenging situations on anyone, something about doing it together gave me a sense of calm as we did our best to meet our kids needs.

I recently joined the Summerville Area Moms Facebook group, and after being in that group for a few weeks I’ve taken away the same sentiment. For every challenge and tricky situation a mom posts about, there are multiple moms going through the same thing who are quick to offer camaraderie and advice when they have it.

When you’re out and about, offer the kind words, the comforting smile, the help you can give when you see another parent in need, because we’re all in this together.

I leave you with one of my favorite poems by David Gate about friendship, Mutual Sanctuary. We all need this sanctuary of friendship as we navigate parenthood.

Until next time!

Love,

The Berks 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

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