Strawberry Fields

After we went to the Flower Fields, we stopped by the Strawberry Fields which also happen to be in Carlsbad as well. You pay for a bucket and then you get to go and pick your own strawberries. The strawberries are red and HUGE! By the time we were finished we had filled up three big buckets and six little buckets. Tonight we made chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry juice, and there are still plenty of strawberries to spare. They were delicious. This is a great family activity and really fun.

Picking away (Trevon and Casey)
Garth, Janelle, and Starlee

Our buckets of strawberries. Casey and I piled the strawberries as high as we could, so we definately got our money's worth : )

Flower Fields

As one of our last activities in San Diego before we leave, we decided to go with Garth, Janelle, and kids to see the Carlsbad Flower Fields. They are beautiful! The main flower is the Giant Tecolote Ranunculus. They are such a cute flower (the peach flower on the slide show). There are just rows and rows of them and they also do a flag with flowers, but we didn't get to see that. There was also a Sweet Pea Maze that smelled amazing. I love flowers : )

A slideshow of all the different flowers that we saw.

An interesting fact about flowers that I learned a long time ago in biology is that their pollen is transported by small animals, insects, and wind. Flowers like this have a "landing pad" (the dots on the bottom) that attracts insects to them and then inside to get the pollen. I always thought that was cool.

Mining for gems. The kids got to do this for a dollar since they got all the stamps in their flower passports.

The fam

Flowers Galore

I had quite the scare yesterday. When we went to take the kids to the water show, I turned on our camera, and all it said was "Lens Error." It wouldn't let me take pictures! I was so bummed I cried (I know, I'm a dork, but I really like taking pictures), so Casey said that I could get a new one, but today it magically started working again. I was so excited that I had to go out and take some pictures. I'm glad we don't have to spend the money on a new camera right now because I'm pretty happy with the camera we have...for the moment : )

Bzzzzzzzz. A busy bee. I'm pretty sure I will never take a better bee picture than this one. If you click on the picture and take a closer look, you can see the detail of the wings.

I think daisies are one of the most photogenic flowers. They usually always have detailed centers, plus they are such a friendly flower.
A flower collage I created on Picassa. I have been taking a lot of flower pictures lately : )

6 kids for 12 Days

For the last 12 days we have been extra busy because we have been watching our 6 nieces and nephews while Janelle and Garth went on a trip to Peru where Garth served his mission. Many people thought that taking care of six kids would make us not want kids, but it actually makes us want kids more : ) The kids were great and we did a lot of fun things with them like, go to the park, go to the IMAX theatre, watch the water show at Viejas, play baseball, hide-and-seek, and clean. Well, I don't think the kids thought that cleaning was that much fun, but Casey and I really enjoyed helping out Janelle and Garth. They are home now and brought us cool presents and took great pictures (look on Janelle's site), and we were just glad that we were able to spend some extra special time with the kids before we head back to Provo.

Every day the kids got to open a present from Garth and Janelle that had to do with their trip. This was Day 1's present: games.

1/2 Day. Garth and Janelle had been gone 6 of the 12 days, so we celebrated with a special half day dinner and a package from Mama and Papa (my parents). We had 1/2 cheese and 1/2 pepperoni french bread pizza, peach halves, 1/2 gallon of juice, and the treats from the package for dessert.
After dinner fun. Watching sea animals grow to more than 1/2 their size : )

Hide-and-Seek. It took a while for the kids to find Casey.

Trevon doesn't like what he just ate. Can you tell? : ) They were dried Inca berries and they can be a little sour.

The kids in their BYU shirts. I have owed Casey this picture for four months, and we finally found Starlee's shirt, so here it is.

The kids were so good while we went grocery shopping that I treated them to TWO rides on the carousel. They think this ride is like the best thing ever. You can tell by their faces how happy they are : )

Happy Easter!

Another wonderful Easter Sunday has come and gone. It was a fun-filled day complete with family, good times, and great food. After church we had a yummy breakfast casserole, made easter cookies, had an easter egg hunt, hung out, played, then had dinner. As always, it was a lot of fun watching the kids look for eggs. Trevon found the Golden Egg, which he didn't think was all that special until he found out that it contained $10. We were all a little jealous after that : ) I'm so grateful for this wonderful time of year and I'm especially thankful for our Savior, Jesus Christ, for his atoning sacrifice, and for the resurrection. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Easter too!

My decorated egg. I was pretty proud!

The hunt is on!

Ryden looked so cute dragging his oh so heavy bucket : )

Bubbles!

Play time with Casey. Starlee loves getting thrown in the air, flipped, and tossed around by Casey. She completely trusts him and is a little thrill seeker. I told her she was our little cheerleader while we were taking these pictures.

Take Me Out To the Ball Game

Casey and I went with Broc, Joanna, and Brady to the Padres Opening Night, and it was Brady's first game. It wasn't exactly as exciting as we thought it would be and we also lost the game, but it made for good memories. Hopefully, for our third Padres game together, they can pull out a win for us.

One of my wisdom teeth has been hurting and it has made it so that I can hardly open my mouth, so Casey being the great husband that he is, used my pocket knife and cut my foot long into bite size pieces for me.

Marines holding the flag for the "Star Spangled Banner" (they also had helicopters that flew over the stadium)

Fun at the Park

The other day we took all the kids to the park for an hour or so. While the kids were playing baseball, I took a few pictures of them. These are my favorites.

When Trevon was in the outfield, he would have his sunglasses on. When he was at bat, he would put them on his head. I'm pretty sure he thinks he is Mr. Cool : )

Casey at the Mound