Summer 2016: Yosemite

Sooo....we tried Yosemite again and for the most part, it was a great success! What a gorgeous place! Sean grew up coming here all the time, so I know it's especially important to him that our kids get to discover the magic of this place for themselves.

So many things to climb on!!

And jump off of :)

My baby-loving girl found this "rock baby", gave it a name and tenderly cared for it the whole trip. It's been over a year now and Roxidillia still lives in our back yard :)

Setting up camp and the rest of our party arrived!

Smores!

Early morning
A few minutes before this picture was taken, I was laying awake in our cozy tent, surrounded by my beautiful, sleeping family and feeling just so good.  Summer had crawled into my sleeping bag at some point over night and she began to open her eyes as I was thinking all these great things, looked at me and said in her cute little voice, "Mom...I don't feel very good". And then threw up all over the inside of my sleeping bag. 

This is not a great start to our day, but still hopeful that it was just a one time thing.

Camping looks good on these two!

Doing their thing...

Doing his thing :)

Summer hadn't thrown up again, so we took our chances and headed off to Vernal Nevada Falls.  The boys were in rock climbing heaven!

She never threw up again, but the diarrhea kicked in just as we made it the the bridge. (yaaaaaay)
Feeling miserable in a beautiful place.  Poor girl!

In between being sick, she was all smiles.  She sure is our sunshine girl!

I LOVE this kid!!

Elliott's first bee sting :(
Thankfully he had lots of love to help ease the pain.

Doing her hair and taking pictures to keep her (or me!) distracted from the fact that she has now pooped through all her clothes, feels miserable and is 2 miles (down a very steep trail) away from camp. 

Sean had taken the boys further up the trail while I stayed near the bathroom with this poor girl.  When she went through her last layer of clothes and Sean was no where in sight, I just put her on my shoulders, hoped that he wouldn't worry about us, headed off down the trail and tried not worry too much about what people must have thought of this lady running down the hill with the naked child on her shoulders with poop running down her back.  Definitely a parenting moment I will never forget!! 

But I will also never forget her sweet, cheerful attitude through it all. 

In other news, Elliott was especially proud to get to put is new, custom painted (with a little help from daddy), bike to the test. 

A good nap and a daddy shirt seemed to make everything a little better

And some time with Grandma always helps!

Let's just take a moment to enjoy this sweet guy in all his camping glory.  

While Summer and I recovered from the day, Daddy took the boys out for some "Guy Time".  This is where they go and do fun and (hopefully only slightly) dangerous things that I don't ever need to know about.  All I  do know is that all 3 of them usually return smiling, sweaty and happy.  

Summer woke up the next morning feeling much better, so we squeezed in one last adventure in before packing up to go home:

Yosemite Falls

One of my most unexpected parenting moments so far: having to explain what this was to my kids.

We've seen a few of these 3D maps now and they are so cool.  I love to see the big picture of what I am looking at.  In this case, the boys showed me where they went swimming the day before on their guy time adventure, the pool right at the base of Upper Yosemite Falls.

"riiiight there"

Then they convinced me that we should all go back, so we did.

Cool idea #10,468 that Sean had, that would have never have crossed my mind.  Thanks babe!!

She is pretty good at climbing up the mountains, but this works for coming down :)

After a trip like this, I often end up with at least a few shots just like this one and although they appear insignificant, over time they have become some of my favorites.  Sean is usually somewhere near the front, ready to shout directions or catch up with somebody who is about to make a bad choice, and I am always in the back, gladly counting heads, chatting with the littlest and feeling quite humbled by the rich life I have found myself leading. Someday I'm gonna try to collect them all and make a book out of them.

Riding back to camp one last time. 

(see, it's another one of those pictures!)