Grand Canyon Birthday Hike

For my Birthday my parents treated me to a grand Canyon hike w Phantom Ranch awaiting us at the bottom. We left late at night and got into the park a little before 6. Everything was so beautiful. Cody and family watched my littles.

Our early morning catching up to us. Waiting for the tram

Love those switchbacks

Going down is my least favorite part. It bonks my knees weird

Ohh Ahh Point

I know my Mom has better pictures. But..

Anyway . Wow. The Grand Canyon is still breathtaking. It is wild going down through so many layers of earth. We made it down, is it 7 miles?, pretty quickly and were able to sneak in to our cabins before we were supposed to. (My Dad has been down the Grand Canyon so many times, he knows all the loopholes.) Took a quick nap and then hiked 13 miles round trip to Ribbon Falls. It was really hot and a lot of it was exposed. Thankfully there was a cool creek we kept dipping ourselves in. We had fun w sing a longs and listening to my Dad singing Elton John. I had never been to ribbon falls. and to be honest the 13 mile hike exposed in the middle of the day, after already hiking 7 miles in 113 degrees was intimidating. It was amazing and I am so glad we had the guts to make it. I think that was part of the beauty of it too. It was pretty untouched and I was thinking, "how many people will even ever see this awesome spot?" ...right as my mom and I stumbled upon a couple taking a nap. The falls made it feel like an air conditioner was on. The wind would blow water sprinkles on us. It was brilliant. I got a pretty gnarly blister on the way back though. The lemonade at Phantom Ranch is the best in the world. mmmm. And the beef stew is also the best in the world. mmm. We also met a cute little amish family, we wont bring up what the cute little amish woman said to my mom's age. That night we went scorpion hunting with a ranger. They glow in black lights! It was wild! We saw 7 or 8 of them. It was so fun hanging out w my parents. I just love those 2. Felt like old times. The hike out was pretty ok. My blister the size of my thumb gave me fits a few times but. It was a good hike. Dad, ever the hero hiked out the last mile with my Mom and I's bakpacks! By the time we got out I was sweating lemonade gatorade. Even 2 months after this hike, the mere thought of gatorade makes me feel yucky. but the hike out is such a rush. We hiked 27 miles in pretty much 24 hours! My shoes started falling apart! I felt so good about myself.
Not only was the hike great but I also enjoyed preparing for it too. We hiked Little Mountain a bunch and went on a few bigger hikes to get ready for it. Thanks Mom and Dad for the adventure. It was just what I was hoping for this year. Thanks for doing all the leg work for me. It was an awesome birthday present. love your guts. And thanks to all the babysitters too!

Sticks bugs and Little Saigon

This was sort of the Summer of the Stick bugs.

My Mom had inherited some from another preschool teacher for her class. They are not native to California and so your not supposed to let them go. Anyway these stick bugs were pretty cool the kids liked to help take care of them at my mom's house. So they were so excited when they saw the stick bug guy at Disneyland hiding in the bamboo. Those Disney folks are so good at the details. rowdy begged me to take a picture for Yaya :)

The darn stick bugs multiplied like crazy and I think most of them died when she came to Texas. It was probably for the best. Rest In Peace little friends

 Brings a tear to my eye, can ride all by himself.

 Afterwards we met BFF Mon Bon in Little Saigon and I found myself kicking... myself for not having eaten in Little Saigon more while I lived so close to it. I flippin' love Viatnamese food. and..We flippin' love Mon Bon. and then I found myself kicking myself for not buying a plane ticket to go to Fiji with her on her scuba slash teaching adventure. ..( I wish :)

Monica is just so great.

love ya girl.

and I love ya Mom for watching Elliot so I could take the boys.

The Mulberry bush

No really, it was!

There are a few mulberry bushes around San Bernardino. My Dad loves to take the boys to go pick berries...actually He just loves to go pick berries... and yeah SB is pretty urban so there is always a certain level of suspence hoping we won't get caught berry pickin'

Ric Rac Racer

So.. It was really an anyone welcome, Colton Ward activity Pinewood Derby and I thought yeah, lets do it. Of course we probably would've won if Cody the master pinner/creative blogger had been here to look up all the secret tips. I didn't have time for that. We received the car the day of the race. 

 The boys were excited to help.i

 Nan had to run off to help with the dinner for the evening and left us free reign over her crafties, of course I am sure we probably accidentally used all of the things she really would have liked preferred us not to use....sorry :/  We had Dee help with the wheels minutes before the race :) and it won ! time! and that was good enough for the boys and i :) They had a lot of fun with it.

 Even after the Race

 We called it the Ric Rac Racer

Fathers day 2012 sin montage

Pops was working and Papa was nervous about a fireside talk so he left early.
Love you Dads. What a good group of Genes we come from

Fathers day montage 2012

May & June

At Tad n amelias we put cousins glow in the dark sticks on the spokes of all the cousins bike 

tires! IT was so surreal looking!, angels game, mothers day eve was so lovely. 

We went in Tad n Amelia's spa, Monday Cody drove up in a new 
car! for my birthday!! I felt like I was in a fancy advertisement! IT was covered it crepe 

paper and full of people. rowdy leaked info, 

tueday rowdy preschool grad...rowdy said he wanted to be a lion tamer when he grows up :) 

Lots of thoughtful birthday peeps, b day ended fun, angels food cake, at lake w livee 
then just dance w canciennes. ...road trip to ca...I fell asleep driving and hit a big 

orange barrell in my brand new MAzda :/ , Then later in the day rolled my finger in 
my window. It turned purple! IT was so painful, 

We surprised everyone in CA, kids finally getting used to the "new" faces. Hung 
out ...lakers nan n pops. Letti's bbqed. Disneylanded. Letti watched Elliot one 
day, camping memorial day weekend....turned into Disneyland. 

It turned out we would've had to hike 3 miles to our camping spot!!. Then dinner w 
monica, Saturday we went to a Scottish festival papa took boys on the train..nagas. 

We saw Cypress ward peeps on Sunday., We went to pharaohs water park, 

Cody goofed on work or dates to go home? so we had a surprise b day party for him 

before he left.
 & we may or may not have had syd dress up like a gorill at Taco Joes then later eat ice cream 

and cake at the park 

Camping trip!!

We had a Bowler camping trip in Lake Arrowhead. The temperature was so nice. We had a big double campground. Lots of Food and lots of fun. It was really a great trip. My kids had soo much fun in the dirt! It was a losing battle for keeping them clean but a winning as far as entertainment.

 Nan included so many cute/useful details. Here is a wash station. and unbenounced to us every evening these crazy flying insects would come out of the trunk and just bother us. There were so many!! luckily they didn't bite or anything. One evening Paige and I took a run and we could barely run because so many crazy insects were in the way!

 Muscle men

 mmmm. I loooove foil dinners

 One evening we were playing baseball and someone realized Paisley and Ezra were missing. I found them in our tent buck naked jumping on our air mattress laaaughing! The baseball game was super fun though we just used an old stick and had a killer tree stump as 2nd base. just ask Zoe :) That was her favorite part. We laughed a lot.

 Paige must've brought her curling iron. Elliot is trying to dirty her up/ break her in

 "I may be dirty, but I look good"

 The ginormous tents

Ezra kept wandering off

 Lots of fun campfire discussions. One of my favorites the evening was when we all started telling riddles and puzzles.

 Nan made an awesome shelf with random sticks and rope. Nan I forgot the scientific name for it :) There were a bunch of games, I remember rumikub, clue and my kids loving the superhero memory

 Look at all the cute details Nan included. It felt so homey. I don't think I got a picture of the garden gnome though. He was cute too.

 I took some kids to Lake Gregory one day. That was fun. In fact I think they are trying to spell fun. We wanted to go low maintenance so we didn't bring suits. but we did have some awesome leaf racing and rock throwing competitions

This picture was for Cody because he was in TX and kept bugging me for pictures

 This picture of Chloe and Zoe cracked me up

 and this one did too :)

 Yay. it was really nice. I think the last evening though there was carnage. Chase had a bad sunburn and was illin', Paige fell pretty bad on the scooter or bike?  Letti was tired and offered to take them home. She ended up taking the littles which made camp clean up swift and fabulous. It was a great trip.

"She's crafty. and she's just my type"

Yaya can always make a cute kid craft out of random...ness, and she's not even a pinner! 

The kids love it. 

Here they are making fish and playing with playdough.

We attempted to Help Yaya clean up shop at the end of her school year, but the kids were having so much fun with all the preschool toys I'm afraid we were more of a hinderance.
Love you Mom!