Sweet Treats (Day 21)

Today we had planned on going to the Exploratorium. It's my kids favorite museum in the Bay Area. They were so tired from the night before though that we decided to postpone it until our last day in California.

Instead we made 12 dozen chocolate covered strawberries for Ken's work. What else was I going to do with 30 lbs. of ripe strawberries??? We had so many strawberries that we ended up bringing about 10 lbs to Ken's work and asking his co-workers to take them home.

Here is the sheet that Darin dipped. After he dipped Strawberries he was our photographer.

We didn't have a kitchen. But we had a microwave and that's all I use at home.

Nathan melted the chocolate. I bought the chocolate from an awesome baking supply store. They even had the right size of red paper cups to lay the strawberries.


Ginger played with the boxes. We had 4- 10" square boxes packed with chocolate dipped strawberries.

Ken's co-workers couldn't believe that we made them at home. They seriously don't know me. But, if they looked closely at the boxes they would have known because Rose and Ginger had colored all inside of them.

Rose even got into the action.

She dipped 2 sheets of strawberries herself.

It wasn't quite perfect but since we were covering them all with coconut they still ended up looking good. She definately thinks she is a big girl.

Here's our finished product! Ken's work loved them. One guy even asked if he could be adopted by me. Now that's what I call a compliment!!!

We spent the rest of the day taking naps and playing at the pool. This is the pool at our hotel. It was nice and all enclosed in glass overlooking the courtyard. We pretty much had it to ourselves 95% of the time. I always try to book us hotels with an indoor pool because we rarely go swimming during the day since we are out exploring. Besides we like to save the swimming for when Ken is around. But I did take them 4 or 5 times during the day on this trip and I took them a couple of times at night by myself too because Ken has been WAY overloaded with this project he has been working on.

It's pretty fun now that Rose is independent. I bought her a vest almost like a life jacket. It took her 2 weeks to feel confident enough to swim around on her own without holding onto me. 2 weeks may not seem like a long time but that was probably about 12 pool trips. Now you couldn't hold onto her if we wanted too. She is so independent and just goes off on her own or with her brothers. She will even jump into the water (of course she doesn't want you to catch her), go under, pop back up and is really happy!