take time to smell the roses

Before we left Portland, we wanted to go somewhere "cultural". So we found this place, the International Rose Test Garden. I'll admit, our primary motivation for going here was because it was free! But it turned out to be kind of fun! Here there are planted every kind of rose you can imagine. There are nearly 5 acres! All roses! I never knew there were that many different kinds!









The girls ran almost the whole time. I think we were the "rowdiest" family there. "Where in the World is....Leah Maile?"

We had fun smelling the roses and trying to take a decent picture. This one of Leah is cute. She isn't smiling because inside the rose were bugs, so she was looking at the bugs. But still, cute picture anyway, right?!



We tried for 5 minutes to get the girls to look at us instead of the fountain. It didn't work. They always looked at the water. Maybe we should have tried longer, eh?











Matt and I tried to take this opportunity to take a good picture of us. It didn't work too well since our photographer was Napua. We did do the typical "hold your arm out and take a picture" picture. And we were staring in the sun quite a bit, so that is guaranteed to make you look goofy! Oh well, we tried.







Our trip ended about 20 minutes after we arrived. The girls decided to run through the mud. Hailey didn't get as dirty as Leah. We had to do the "white trash" thing and wash our kids off in the drinking fountain! I tried to be discrete, but how can you be when you have a child's muddy foot in the drinking fountain and she's crying because she's all dirty?! And do you know the worst part of the whole ordeal? We didn't get any pictures! What were we thinking?! Oh well, at least it was free, so we don't feel like we wasted any money! :)