Joy Turns 4

So it took a few weeks and a few borrowed eggs, but we finally let Joy have a birthday.  She wanted to have a horse themed party, so I wanted to make her a carosel cake.  I bought the stuff, borrowed the eggs, and wrestled with fondant for about two hours.  After much muttered cursing, and loud yelling, I gave the project up to Johnny.  He did a great job putting it together for me. 

And of course her present was a horse. 

And this was her reaction to finding money in her birthday card from Grandma.

Did I forget to mention? Summer Roundup

Here's some things that happened this summer that I forgot to mention. 

The Captain lost his first tooth shortly after
Kindergarten got out.

One day our AC went out. Johnny was traveling, of course, so I called an AC repair guy, but they couldn't come until the morning, so we were without AC all night and most of the next day.  So we went to story time, lunch at the Rec Center,  and a super hero snack party at the library.  All in all, not a bad free way to stay out of the house until 4 pm.  The kids had a great time.  And food.  So they were saved from one catastrophe.  

We tried to do something fun everyday.  That lasted about a month, then it became once a week.  This was one of the fun things.  There were free concerts at the Mall, and Joy got called up on stage to dance during the pre-show.  She got a (huge) t-shirt and a bag of goodies.  Then both children were upset during the David Chicken concert.  I'm not sure why Joy was upset, she either did or didn't want to go up on stage again - I was never sure.  The Captain didn't want to be there until David Chicken mentioned that he had a friend with The Captain's same name.  Then suddenly he was sold.  So maybe not the most fun, but it got us out of the house. 

4th of July breakfast parade with the Ward. 

Playgroup activity at a petting zoo/farm in Irving.  It was crazy cool, and totally free.  If I hadn't thrown water on The Captain to cool him off - did NOT go well - we might still be there.

Oh, and this happened.

We had to stop family scripture study one night for some first steps.  It was one of the cutest things that's ever happened in our house.

After school started for The Captain, I took Joy to story time at the science museum.  It was awesome, but I quickly realized that we needed to get this girl into preschool.  

bubbles

doing science

mini scientist

Reunion Time! - Part 4 Crater Lake

We spent Day 2 of our reunion at Crater Lake National Park.  We picked the best day to go, too.  The following days were really overcast and smoggy due to the fires, but for some reason, it was clear and beautiful for us.  The whole family met at the lodge for lunch and the movie explaining the creation of Crater Lake.  Then we decided which hikes to go on.  Thanks to the children's stunning performance hiking in the redwood, we decided to take the whole family on a difficult hike down to the actual lake.  I've been to Crater Lake many times, but never down into the actual basin, so I was pretty excited.  They said it was equivalent to 67 flights of stairs, so I was impressed that my parents decided to go.  

Here's the group before we started.  Note that Joy is upset, not at the idea of hiking or seeing the lake, but that she lost her water bottle at the main cabin and had to borrow her cousins and she did not want it.

We made it down no problem, though of course, it rarely is.  Here's The Captain and my niece enjoying some very cold, very blue water.

And here's my niece after she fell in.

And after all that, Joy wanted to get her feet wet, too.

And what was Miss Lee doing?  Sleeping on Daddy, of course, she fell asleep quite soon after we started hiking.

Johnny was busy uploading pictures like this one on his phone. My children almost loved me right into the lake, too.

Here's the offending water bottle.  She fell in love with it as soon as she was distracted by hiking and chipmunks and water.

And here's the group post hike up.  I had some help by my brother with pokey Joy, who was giving me a good excuse to slowly crawl up the mountain.  But keeping pace was good for me, and as you can see, we all survived and we felt pretty darn good.

Reunion Time! - Part 3 The Redwoods

On Joy's birthday, we spent the day in the Redwoods.  We started out driving a 5 mile loop to introduce the kids to what "big" trees actually were.  It was so fun to hear them oo and ah when we saw the first real sequoias.  We weren't planning on stopping to hike, but we saw a small trail to the river and decided, what the heck, it was only .7 miles.  We ended up taking a much longer path, but I don't think anyone minded.  In fact, it was the kids' favorite hike.

nature's playground

natural log bench = picture time

I wanted a picture that captured my love of this place.  This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but pretty awesome considering I was unprepared.  Also, I love that I can get golden light at 1pm in the forest. 

We tuckered this little girl out.  We climbed giant trees, played by the river, crossed a crooked bridge, and did it all again in reverse.  The kids would have stayed at the river all day, there were tadpoles and new frogs.

If this picture doesn't portray sadness, I don't know what does.  Poor Joy was cold so I gave her my sweater, but it wasn't her jacket, cause her jacket was in the car, and we were walking back to the car.  #preschoolproblems

We stopped for a picnic and went for one more hike after lunch.  I was looking for my family's favorite trail, but couldn't find it.  The one we went on was very flat and easy and informative.  We learned to identify two different families of ferns.  We accidentally went on the loop twice, which normally wouldn't have been a problem except that I was giving Joy a piggy back ride and she fell asleep on the first loop, so I was carrying an extra 40 pounds of dead weight for the whole second trip.  We obviously don't hike enough if 1 1/2 trails can wipe Joy out.  Or maybe it was the sweater sadness . . .

The next day we had to head to Crater Lake for the reunion, but we decided to do one more hike before we left, since it was on the way out.  We picked a hard one, with a difficult mountainous loop attached, which we went up on the return trip.  Despite having already hiked almost 2 miles, no one complained about the steepness or the difficulty.  We've got some troopers.  Pretty sure they could handle Mt. Timp.  

Not sure if anyone's ever mentioned that it's difficult to get all the children to cooperate . . .

The Captain, "another picture, Mom?"

Headed into a hollow tree.  We found out that the bark of Redwoods is pretty much fireproof, which is why there are so many hollow trees.  Eventually there is a big enough crack in one for the fire to get in and burn the wood on the inside, leaving the mostly indestructible bark shells.

Loved the patterns on this tree.

One of five slugs spotted on our hike.  Since this one had spots,
it was clearly the favorite.

Pretty sure Johnny asked me not to post this picture.

The many faces of Lee

She did this one for the first time that day.

Stank face, which she will do on command.

And of course, Joy will join in any silliness.  Hard to believe this miracle baby is 4 already.

So I think I converted some of the family to the Redwoods.  And if there is ever a zombie apocalypse, we will move our food storage to the Redwoods and hunker down there.  Because not only will I get to be in my favorite place in the world, but ain't no zombies gonna find us in there, fool!