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

Ethan's Fieldtrip

I was lucky enough to go with Ethan on his Trolley fieldtrip on the 27th. We first took a bus to the trolley station, rode the trolley to downtown san diego, ate lunch by the pier, took the ferry to Coronado, then took a bus back to school. Along the way they gave us a checklist of things to look for (school bus, firetruck, Petco Park, etc.). I thought it was a great way to entertain the kids along the way. I'll probably try it once I have kids : ) We had a lot of fun and am so glad to be an aunt on days like these. I have also never seen so many kids without teeth at one time : )

Ethan and I on the ferry

Downtown San Diego from the Ferry
The kids looking over the side of the boat. The little girl in the blue jacket is Madelyn, she was in Ethan and I's group.

Once we got to Coronado, all the kids got to play on the beach. Ethan liked chasing the pigeons. I really liked how I got him chasing it mid-flight and with it's shadow on the ground.

Photo Shoot

I like to take pictures, and if I haven't taken any in a while I start to get a craving. To solve this problem I'll pick up our camera and take pictures of the kids while they are playing in the yard or walk around and look for something to take a picture of. This photo shoot happened to be of the kids. It is hard to resist taking pictures of them since they are so cute. I've also never made a picture black and white before, so I practiced a little with these photos.

Starlee. She is the biggest Ham and is always ready for someone to take a picture of her : )

Ryden has the longest lashes I have ever seen, so I wanted to take a picture that focused on them. I think it turned out alright. I would kill for his lashes : )
After I posted these pictures, Casey said he like the color version of Ryden better, so now I'm posting this one as well. I like the black and white, Casey likes the color. Which one do you guys like better?

Attention!

Garin is such a funny kid and definately doesn't lack imagination. Since he was really little he has always liked wars, battles, etc. He loves "Star Wars," "Lord of the Rings," and learning/reading about wars in history. Because of this we often catch him participating in his own imaginary battles. It is so much fun to watch because he makes the sound effects, gets on the ground, hides behind bushes, and as you can see, is very resourceful as he dresses for the part.

Through a window, so it is a little blurry, but I couldn't resist putting this picture up : )

Taking aim

Spring is here!

As always, I'm so excited for spring to finally be here. Granted, it is only slightly warmer than winter in San Diego, but still. The word spring just makes me thinks of picnics, fluffy little ducklings, and of course FLOWERS springing up left and right. These white daisies are everywhere in Janelle and Garth's yard, so I went out and took a few pictures. I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Same type of flower, but an underside view.

Survey Says?

Okay, so here is the deal. For my birthday, Casey took me shopping and I bought clothes. Whenever I get new clothes, I have this huge desire to wear them right away. I just get too excited about all the cute things that I bought to wait. Sometimes I also imagine the perfect outfit, which sometimes involves more than one piece of clothing, so I'll buy one article of clothing then the other, and as soon as I have the whole outfit I want to wear it right away. I also tend to look over some of my older clothes in favor of the new ones. Am I the only one that does this? Is it just a girl thing? All of these questions were going through my head as I put on my new birthday clothes that I absolutely LOVE, which I have thanks to my wonderful, hardworking husband : ) Any thoughts?

Legoland

When Casey's mom first said that she was coming down she mentioned going to Legoland because it is the only amusement park she hadn't been to yet. When people asked what we were doing, they kind of gave us funny looks because Legoland is typically a kids park and you don't usually see four adults going by themselves, but I don't think they know how much fun it is. My favorite part was everything built out of legos. I didn't think you could build so many cool things with legos. It was fun going around and being a kid for a day : )

Since I like to take pictures, I had to take a picture with the camera man

Charity and Mom's favorite ride as we saw storybook land

Casey's mom soaked after the pirate ship ride. You got to squirt people with water and got squirted as well. Casey and I had so much fun getting people wet.

New York City Skyline (In Miniland)

The attention to detail was amazing. Even houses or scences farther away from the path had so much detail. This is Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

"I like big butts and I cannot lie" We thought that this little detail was pretty funny

Flowers along the way. I like how they sprouted right out fromt he tree branches.

Castle Lock-up

It was pretty fun to watch Casey's mom on this ride. She screamed at every turn. It was more fun than the ride itself : )

Legoland: Racers 4-D (the movie was really corny, but made for a good picture)