San Simeon

Our second stop on our camping trip was San Simeon State Park. We got there early on a Friday, and were able to choose a great campsite with lots of space and privacy. We only had one night here, so we relaxed and went for an evening bike ride since it was way too windy to walk down to the beach. Parker enjoyed more marshmallows here, too!

Strawberry Deliciousness

Since we had so many ripe strawberries to work with once we got home from the fields, I knew that I would have to find a way to use them all up quickly. I tried out a strawberry pie recipe that I found online, and it was fantastic! Luckily, I already had all of the ingredients at home, and it was so easy to make (especially with help from my little sous chef). The melted chocolate chips lining the pie crust were a ridiculously yummy touch. So good that we'll have to make this a yearly tradition after visiting the strawberry fields!

Strawberry Fields Forever

We went to the U-Pick Strawberry Fields in Carlsbad with Grammy, and had so much fun! You pay to pick a bucket full of berries, and then are turned loose in the fields to choose your own berries--we went for the reddest, ripest, plumpest, biggest berries we could find. There were so many amazing berries in the fields that we could have filled up the bucket within the first two feet of our row. None of us could resist sampling a few berries along the way--especially Mr. Parker, who seemed to have yet another strawberry in his mouth (and all over his face, hands, and sweatshirt) every time I turned around! They were truly the best strawberries I have ever tasted--shows what a difference it makes to eat truly ripe, fresh fruit. We totally overloaded our bucket--we just couldn't stop ourselves from picking because there were so many great berries to choose from--and didn't realize that our shoes were absolutely caked in mud and strawberry mush until after we climbed back in our car! But it was totally worth it--so much fun!

Yum!

After finishing with his demolition duties for the day on Monday, Jared somehow had one last burst of energy and made us all a delicious smoothie/sorbet concoction!

Sugar Cookies

For some reason, I had been obsessed with the idea of making sugar cookies with Parker (with colorful icing and all). We found some cool cookie cutters--a dinosaur, fire truck, and lobster--and went to town. Parker is really into wanting to do everything himself lately, so he got a try at the rolling pin, cutters, and of course the icing. He gravitated to the black icing right away, and decorated each of his cookies with a huge swath of black! (It took me a little while to realize that I had to just let myself go and let him have fun, since that's what the activity was all about!) Yummy!