Don't Scoot and Eat Cookies

A mere 20 minutes before leaving our 7 days of camping, a cookie, a scooter handle bar, and Derek's eye all collided for one painful moment. Actually, the cookie wasn't in his eye, but his concentration was ON the cookie, thus somewhat sparking the accident. Here's what it looked like a few hours later.
Pretty well swollen, but not enough to prevent movie watching. He actually complained very little, despite how horrible it looks. I'm just glad we didn't have to do stitches or a glass eye.

The Coastal Redwoods Revisited

It only took us 745 miles of driving, roughly two days (not including two nights at Clear Lake with Baileys and Steeds), at least 6 movies, innumerable threats, several seat changes, and months of planning, but we made it up to the Redwoods to meet Lee's sister and family. The weather was very cool, but for the most part sunny, and the kids had a wonderful time hiking, climbing on rocks and redwoods, riding bikes in the campground, and getting extremely dirty. Lee and I were close to nervous breakdowns a few times, but managed to leave the trip without any permanent mental damage.Finding a GeoCache out at Patrick's Point. It was shoved way, way back in those rocks.


Picnicking at Prairie Creek, where, unfortunately, Grayson wasn't the least bit interested in a long hike. After Prairie Creek, we, of course, had to trek out to Fern Canyon so that we could recreate a family tradition. It was getting later in the day, and Carissa was not at all excited about a hike through the gorgeous canyon. She didn't want any part of it, in fact. So, I felt it my duty to record the ordeal for posterity.

" I don't want to go!"

" I hate Fern Canyon!" " I'm not walking there!""Why do we have to go here!!!""I'm waiting here!"

Derek, on the other hand, had a very different outlook on the whole outing.THere were sticks,
and rocks to throw, and strams to crosswhich he almost did without getting wet. Almost.But ultimately, everyone had a great time, and everyone wanted to stay longer!

"Alaskaaaa"

I've posted a set of photos from our Alaska trip. Sorry it took so long - I've been a bit sidetracked with unpacking and setting up our new place.

Anyway, you can see them all right here.

Enjoy!

Ohhhh, Mexico

These pictures are all out of order, but that's because I have no idea what I"m doing. But I wanted to show you some images from our impromptu trip south of the border. We were lucky enough to find a little casita almost right on the beach at a very reasonable price, and even luckier to find a temporary best friend for Carissa who was also visiting there with her family. Here are the kids all at sunset.

Just south of the private beach was the public beach, which you can kind of see in the background. Lots of dogs, lots of fires, lots of Hot Cheetos; it was basically like LA.

The cute wooden door was the door to the Hacienda where we stayed, which contained 4 separate houses. It leads to an outdoor hallway up to the casita.
I realize that I've posted the same picture twice.

Behind Lee and me is the Hacienda we stayed at.

This is the courtyard, complete with fireplace and cool outside shower. We ate all our meals out here and roasted marchmallows, too.

This says "MEXICO". It's pretty bad. But we tried. We spent most of the day with this other family (from the OC) staying two houses down and this was our attempt at creativity.

All in all, we had a great time and would love to return with a bigger group next year!!

The only downfall was the 1 1/2 hour wait to get across the border.

Legoland- Lots o' Legos and Crazy Fun!

We took the kids to Legoland last week en route to Mexico. It's a good thing we went this summer, because had we waited any longer, Carissa would have found it "so boring". However, it was the ideal theme park for the boys, with billions of lego structures and age appropriate rides.

Grayson was able to go on almost everything with either Carissa or a parent holding him.

I enjoyed getting a good arm workout on this one!


The $5 popsicles were definitely the highlight of the day.

Wonderful Week 3

Okay---my last effort, I think, to post pictures from our wonderful week.

Had to include at least one of the hot tub!

Wonderful Week 2

Okay, I don't have these pictures in order, but you can figure it out, I think. What a great week it was, with birthdays, graduations, weddings and kickin' back together. Here Sus, Tyler and Erin having a blast at home, the crew at "the rock" during our geo-caching adventure and, before that, actually, Paige's moment with her cake.