Yosemite Yam

We made a spontaneous trip to Yosemite National Park Friday after work through midnight on Saturday.



It was a breath-taking experience and super fun. Our kids were great. Sarah packed lots of goodies and we had incredible vistas.

We drove 3 hours on Friday and stopped at Lee Vining. The kids love hotels and turned each bed into a trampoline. Once they went to bed, I went over for some yummy barbecue meat. I liked the taste until it got cold and I had to gnaw it off the bone. Darn't! It ruined the experience.

Well, next day we started at 5:50 am. We were all bright eyed except for Sarah. We left by 7 am and drove 2.5 hours to Yosemite proper. We saw the Yosemite falls and visitor center and took a number of wandering trips and took lots of photos.

The best part was yet to come - we left the valley floor and climbed some 4000 feet in 30 minutes to Glacier Point at about 9000 feet. Thank heavens for Sienna, our trusty van. I can't imagine climbing that by foot.

Here is our incredible panoramic view of Half Dome from there [click on the image for the really large view]



Oh, and we saw some 50 or so climbers on the top of Half Dome through a telescope. It was nuts



Here is a view of the valley floor just to the West of the Half Dome. The green down below is where we were 30 minutes previously



Lastly, we headed to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and snagged a picture of this giant - It is several photos stitched together which explains the rough edge.



This picture was crazy too - you can drive a small car through this and amazingly, the tree is still alive and growing.



Here is one of Levi taking a mid-day snooze on some cute girl's back



This is a picture of the root system on these trees which goes 6-8 feet deep but up to 250' in diameter.




Finally, here is a picture slide show of all these pictures and more

55 Reasons to Love Mom

55 Reasons We Love This Lady



Mom - Happy Birthday!

Here are 55 reasons that we love you.

1. She spoils my "rotten" kids . . . I mean "kids rotten". ;-)
   
2. She works very hard.
3. She cares deeply for people.
4. She spent thousands of hours listening to me late into the evening.
5. She remembers things that are important to those she loves.
6. She deeply loves my father and works hard at her marriage.
   
7. She is funny and has a wonderful belly laugh that we get the privilege to see on occasion.
8. She likes to play games.
9. She makes the best Orange Jello Salad in the world.
10. She has a fun design style and is always working on a project.
11. She can touch her nose with her tongue
12. Every once in a while she'll let her18-year old self out to play for a while.
13. She is always finding a good "garage sale" deal
14. She is always having a garage sale to sell some of those good "garage sale" deals.
15. My kids love her (and Grandpa).
16. She hardly ever lets a week go by without a call to check-in.
17. She is happy.
18. She makes the world a bit happier.
19. She even makes burned food taste yummy.
    
20. She taught me to love honey on grilled cheese.
21. She understands people's needs.
22. She makes music when she snores. ;-) Hehehe
    
23. She is her kids best friend.
24. She cares about the details of my life.
25. She taught me how to be prayerful.
26. She gave me great pep talks to woo away my worries.
27. She loves through her touches and gives great hugs and gave great "face massages" as a kid.
28. She loves to read.
29. She is the glue that keeps our family and her siblings together.
30. She seems to have great perspective to life.
    
31. She was always great friends with my friends and made them want to come over.
32. She is beautiful and has a wonderful smile.
33. She has some mischievous spunk to her.
34. She went toilet papering with me and my friends.
35. She opened my world to opportunities and ideas.
36. She lives for Grandkid visits and my kids know it.
37. She spends her time and money to come visit no matter how far away we are.
38. She loves the Lord and has shared that with me.
39. She is honest.
40. She is trustworthy and can be confided in.
41. She is always sharing with the less fortunate.
42. She is a good conversationalist and always has something interesting to say.
43. She is the center of our family.
44. She let me drink all the 2% milk I wanted growing up.
45. She made great custom shaped b-day cakes.
46. She was willing to beat up the Bynam bully that popped me in the nose. ;-)
47. She never said "no" to all the sports and activities I wanted to participate in.
48. She spent all her Saturdays and evenings focusing on her kids' stuff.
49. She gives to the community.
50. She is growing old very very well.
51. She quickly gets to know other people and make them feel welcome.
52. She is transparent, not stubborn and willing to make positive changes.
53. She is true to her covenants.
54. She taught me to eat all my food (or wait, maybe that was Dad).
55. She is one of my best friends.

We love you, Mom.

Chris, Sarah and kids

One day left of Kindergarten

I took my lunch break and joined the family at Caleb's Kindergarten End of School Celebration. It was cool. They had food, games and lots of playing.

Here are some pics:



Watching Caleb play with his friends sent me back to my year as a Kindergartner some 27 years ago. How I remember certain things like it were yesterday. We lived in two places and I went to two kindergartens. The first was Sunset Elementary and we lived in a yellow duplex. The second was South Gate Dragons and we lived in a blue house. 

Here are a few of the funniest:

1. At the yellow duplex, Gary and I and two naughty friends tried to smoke some used cigarette butts that we picked up from the neighbor kids yard. We used one of those low to the ground briquette grills to hold the fire while we tried to light the cigarettes. Good thing Mom was vigilant and had a lawn sprinkler close by because our fire spilled out of our container and started the weeds on fire. I promise that was the once and only time I tried to smoke - crazy that I was in kindergarten.
   
2. I also remember trying to climb the splintery power pole outside our house. I slipped and got poked in the belly by a long screw. I still have the scar.
   
3. I remember another scar when I climbed the side fence. The builder used the equivelant of railroad ties and wouldn't you know it, I slipped and got 1/2" of broken splinters in the inside of my arm. Mom took me to the ER. I was a basket case crying for her and didn't even peep in the ER.
   
4. I remember Mom babysitting a girl that was always peeing her pants and having to use my pants. which she also peed in. I really disliked her for that and in the end, I remember blaming her for my own bed wetting habit. ;-) My logic - something from her passed in those jeans that I wore and made me wet the bed. Hahaha 
   
5. I couldn't help but steal polished pretty rocks from some old lady's front steps. I did it a bunch of times too and thought nothing of it. ;-) Perhaps that explains why Caleb has his own little rock collecting fetish.
   
6. I learned to ride a bike and ran into the back of a parked car at the bottom of the hill and got the wind knocked out of me bad. Ouch.
   
7. I also remember having an absolute fascination with motorcycles then - the same neighbor that tempted me with cigarettes had a picture of a bike that is still in my head.

Then, midway through school, we moved to the blue house.

1. I had a buddy named Chris and another named Wendy. Wendy invited us over all the time to play but she wanted to play barbies and the other Chris was okay with that so they'd play and I'd go home to ride my bike.
2. I played kiss tag a handful of times at recess and due to Chris' pressure had Wendy pinned under me on the ground by our SouthGate Dragon's school sign.  I was 6 inches from kissing her. In the end, I was too nervous and so the other Chris popped Wendy a big Kindergarten smacker. ;-) She struggled like she didn't want to be kissed but she liked both of us, and we knew it.
3. There was a guy in our neighborhood whose father built him this cool two story fort in their backyard and it had the rough hewn bark covered slabs of wood on the outside so it felt like a real 1800s sort of fort. 
4. I remember Ronnie Wright lived in the culdesac one over from me and we played the Atari Asteroids game as often as possible.
5. Ronnie and I also had elastic in common - that is we both had super hero elastic undies and t-shirts and many times, we would strip down to our skivvies and go slippy sliding on his irrigated bare grass. It was a ton of fun. 
6. I looked up Ronnie a few years back and he was playing professional minor league baseball.
7. I remember when Krystal was born. We were given an oriental cabbage meal one evening from a ward member and I wanted to puke when I tasted it. I think I went to bed hungry.
8. I remember the night I woke screaming after watching the Star Trek episode where the Doc pulled an alien looking ear wig out of the Eastern European speaking guy's ear. It had done some major damage to his brain. Well, I had a "way too real" dream that ear wigs had invaded my ears and were all over my body. Ughhh! It took my parents a long time to convince me it wasn't real.

Funny memories huh? What is your funniest kindergarten memory?