Playing in Nature

Last week, to take a break from packing and moving, I took the kids to Fairy Tale Town and to play at the duck pond. It's one of my favorite spots to go. It's just so serene and pretty. I just love all of the pretty flowers and the kids love to play with the ducks and geese. (Plus this is around the corner from the Japanese bakery, so we always go there to pick food up and have a picnic)

(Chloe's playing in the empty toy bin, and for some reason this is her "cheese" face. She saw the camera and kept saying "cheese!" but would scrunch up her face)

Elijah and Chloe had a blast at Fairy Tale Town, but were all over the place so it was hard to take pictures. Elijah's favorite thing was still the pirate ship. He's been really into pirates right now, so he had fun pretending to captain the ship and kept yelling "Aye Aye Captain!" and "Ahoy Matey's!"... if you asked him though he was the captain lol. Chloe loved the crooked mile. She would just take off around it and even try to run past some of the other kids on the "road". Then as soon as she came out, she'd try to run back in the opposite direction. She kept creating traffic jams.

Jed joined us for our picnic. There were so many geese trying to be fed down at the pond. Elijah had so much fun throwing bits of bread to them and Chloe just took off trying to chase them. It was really funny to watch her chase them because some of them were bigger than her. When she couldn't pet one, she started to chase the squirrels.

Here are a few flowers in the garden.

This little guy stopped by and both of the kids were fascinated with him.

I love little places like this in big cities. It's just so nice to have a quiet place to go so nearby. Jed and I also went to San Fransisco to drop my mom off at her hotel because she was flying to Paris the next day. On our way out, we stopped by the Golden Gate Park. It was almost dark, so we only had a few minutes of sunlight left, but we were able to get out and walk around the rose park and a little bit in the woods. I really wish we had the kids with us, so now we're planning a trip so we can bring them along, so you'll be seeing more pictures later after that trip :)

Roses aren't my favorite flowers, but I always love seeing rose gardens. I think it's because it reminds me of my grandma's house and her rose gardens. Plus, they are Jed's favorite flower so he always buys them for me.

I love the woods! There's something so romantic about just walking hand in hand secluded from everyone and everything else amongst tall trees. I told Jed that I want to retire somewhere in the woods. We can just build a house and then take walks through them everyday. It's one of the things that I'm going to miss moving to Utah. Trees! I love living around trees and in Utah, it's all flat and very tree deficient. But I guess, I can go visit them.

I don't know why, but I love the look of bark. I know I might be weird, but oh well.

 Wouldn't you just love to take a walk here everyday?

On our way out of the city, we stopped by the overlook next to the Golden Gate Bridge. I had originally hoped to get there for the sunset, but it was way too late. Sorry these pictures might not be that great. This is my first time trying to take pictures in the dark, and I still need to read my camera book for all of my settings.
But here are a few of my favorite pictures.

(I liked this one, because of the gigantic cloud overhead of this huge city, and it makes the city seem to small and insignificant.)

(This is Elijah's favorite picture because of the train, which I didn't even notice until he pointed it out to me lol)

(This is Jed's favorite picture of me, even though I look deranged in it. And the only reason I'm putting it up is because Jed complains that I always delete pictures of me that I don't like, so this is for him)