Yellowstone

For Memorial Weekend, we went with Chris and Amanda to Amanda's cabin in Ashton (an hour from Idaho Falls where she is from). Yellowstone happens to be about 40 minutes away from the cabin, so we went and explored for two days. It was my first time, so it was pretty exciting. There is so much to see and we pretty much saw everything except a moose. We saw 4 black bears, elk, bison, bald eagles, osprey, Mule deer, American white pelicans, and trumpeter swans. Not to mention there is also geyser after geyser too see, a lot of waterfalls, and rivers. It is so beautiful there and the weather couldn't have been better. We also saw "Pirates 3" on opening day in Idaho Falls and the play "Footloose" at the Playmill in West Yellowstone on Saturday thanks to Amanda's mom. I absolutely LOVED Pirates. It was one of the best memorial weekends I've ever had. These are some of my favorite pictures.

A Bison.
Fountain Paint Pots
Old Faithful
There was a breeze that pushed the steam back enough to see the pretty blue water.

Casey standing in the steam. I think he looks like a ghost.

A picture on one of the boards warning you not to stand on the geysers...

...and our representation of the same picture. Directed by Chris and taken by Amanda : )

In '86 there was a fire in Yellowstone, so you would often see patches of these bare trees.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Lower Falls

Rainbow on Upper Falls

Dragon's Mouth Geyser

A slideshow of some more pictures

"Oh sweet mercy! A lime green hatchback. It's a thing of beauty!"

I pass this car every day when I go and take Casey lunch and had to share it with those that had seen the commercial. It starts with a guy on his computer uploading a picture of a lime green hatchback and his wife comes up and says, "Honey, who is going to want your lime green hatchback." Then the shot changes to another guy wearing lime green clothing, in a room completely decked out with lime green everything, looking at the picture of the lime green hatchback, and he says, "Oh sweet mercy! A lime green hatchback. It's a thing of beauty." It is one of the funniest commercials. I tried to find a clip of it online, but with no luck, so you will have to go with my description, which might just make you think, "I guess you had to be there." : )

Attack of the Ants

Casey and I came home last night and Casey pointed this out to me. At first glance it looked like a pile of dirt. There were so many in such a small area that we couldn't see exactly why they were there. It reminded me of an old movie called "The Naked Jungle" with Charleton Heston that I used to watch on TV whenever it was on. It is about these army ants that attack a plantation. I recommend it if you like old movies.

Cosmo

We went to the last 4 baseball games of the season (one against UVSC and the other three against Utah). We won every single one and they were really good games. I learned how to score baseball on those little sheets they give you too. I was quite proud of myself and it was fun to be able to recall some of the stats throughout the game. Anyways, at the Saturday game I took my first picture with Cosmo. I figured it was a must for me before we left.

Drip, Drip, Drop Little April Showers

Well, it wasn't April, and it really wasn't a shower (just a sprinkler), but this made me think of that song in Bambi when it starts raining. Instead of just soaking the grass, the water just kind of gathered and created these pretty looking droplets.

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day we went up to my parents for dinner with Chris and Amanda. We had a wonderful dinner and great time hanging out and playing games. I'm so thankful for my mom and the great example that she has been to me. I couldn't ask for a better mother. I love you mom!

Putt-Putt

One night we were thinking of something to do with Chris and Amanda, so Casey suggested that we go play mini golf. Mini golf for Casey is like bowling for me, it's the challenge of beating the other person that makes you continue playing. Since we've been married, I've only beat him once at bowling and he's only beat me once at mini golf. The boys also decided that they wanted to play boys vs. girls. Well, the girls won : ) (thanks to my skills and Amanda's three hole-in-ones), and the boys being poor losers cheated as much as they could throughout the game (typical). It was a lot of fun, and Casey has still only beaten me once : )

Amanda
Happy Gilmore : )

Chris

Casey measuring to get the best angle for his stroke. It actually worked pretty well.

The winners!

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 : )