A Week of Pictures

There is no cohesive theme in this blog today.  But I thought I would share some cute pictures from the last week.

 

Harry likes to color.  I think for a two year-old he is pretty darn good at it. Luckily, he has a thing for orange paper. This makes it easy to distinguish his scribble masterpieces from the other scribble masterpieces that are lying on the floor in various locations around the house.  The kid is quite proud.  And who knows, at some point he may graduate to yellow! Or green! Or blue! But for now, it is orange, thank you very much.

 

 

We took the kids to Lake Tahoe last weekend, before public school started. It was fun to hang out with friends from church and enjoy the nice weather, while it is still here.  Julia and Harry were a cute little pair on the beach chair, eating cookies together.

 

 
She has a wild smile and a thing for chocolate. This is her smile pose for the camera.  A bit demonic. Maybe a little inkling into her very "strong" personality.

 
And sometimes, something really cool happens...like a random nap on the couch right when I have to make dinner.  It is like the whole house can take a deep breath and exhale.

 

 

And in completely unrelated news, look what happened at the park.  This totally cracked me up.  She ran over a bicycle.  They had to dismantle the bike with a wrench to get it out.  Just glad it wasn't me!

 

 

A Blind Adventure

As the summer is winding down, I am trying to think of things to do with the kids that capitalize on outdoor adventures. Yesterday ended up being one of those days.

 

After we woke up yesterday, it was time to hit the road because I think we were all going house crazy.  We headed south on the newly opened freeway to Carson City.  Then we stopped at Mill Park to play for a few minutes. After the slide and swings, Zach got everyone, including me, to play Duck Duck Goose. It was a lot of fun.

 

We  then stopped at Raley's to get some food and continued south through Genoa and then up the Kingsbury Grade (which has incredible views of Gardnerville) to Heavenly and Lake Tahoe.  Finally, I found a little treasure at Taylor Creek.  There was a neat walking trail that was about a mile, if that. It wound around a wetland area. At the back of the trail was a building that was half in the ground. When we went inside, it was an aquarium of sorts, where the glass exposed the pond.  We could see trout swimming around and the kids loved it.

 

Here they are splashing sticks in the little pond.

 

 

As we continued on the trail, a bit of it was a boardwalk where the ground was too marshy.  But Raef spotted a frog, so we stopped to take a look.  We finally started to realize that there were 3 or 4 dozen frogs right there. That was pretty cool.

 

At the end of the trail, we enjoyed this view.  Emerald Bay is in the background.

 

 

We continued on our journey and did stop at the vista point at Emerald Bay for a few minutes.  It is spectacular. If you are ever in this part of the world, it is a must-see stop.  Of course, I didn't take a picture, but trust me. It is incredibly beautiful.

 

With the help of lots of treats and crunchy things, our little surprise expedition was a success.

Tahoe Rim Trail at Mt. Rose

One of my bucket list things to do this summer was to take my boys on a long hike.  I finally made it happen on Tuesday.  We drove to the summit at Mt. Rose and did a loop hike on the the Tahoe Rim Trail.  The boys were happy to go.  We brought a lunch and lots of water and set out on a wilderness adventure.

 

I made sure to wear my GPS watch so I could see how far the hike was.

 

At first, Raef was thrilled to be on the trail, and Zach was not so happy.  It might have been because I made them both carry the backpacks.  I didn't realize that Zach had the heavy one, as I had inadvertently put all three waters in his pack.  I kept telling him to quit whining and keep going.

 

Yes I really am a slave driver.

 

At the junction where the trail splits at 2.5 miles, there was an awesome little waterfall.

 

And the view was fantastic!

 

 For some reason, I thought the waterfall was the halfway point.  As we headed back, there was a deer in our path.  She winked and said hello and then sauntered down the steep hill after another deer came out of nowhere and shooed her off. It was really quite bizarre.

 

After most of the water had been consumed and the pack was lighter and cookies were in the belly, Zach was in a lot better frame of mind. He was telling jokes and saying funny things to me, as Raef was lagging behind, sulking because it was just too far. It was a complete reversal.

 I could finally see the road and realized that we probably had at least another mile to go.  I thought it was going to be a medium 5 mile hike, but I knew we were not going to be that fortunate. 

And then, kersplat!  Zach completely biffed it and did a face plant into the gravel.  Then it was just all over.  He was miserable and couldn't go on another step.  I really had to put on the mean, suck it up and quit whining face with both of them.  There was no way I was going to carry either one of them back!

Luckily, when the GPS clocked in at 6.08 miles, we were at the car. 

Now, if I want to strike fear into the hearts of my dear boys, all I have to do is say the H word, and they are begging for mercy.

Bart and Family

We had some house guests again this weekend.  It was loads of fun.  Bart and Monica and their four kids came and stayed with us Friday and Saturday. They left Sunday morning.  Rinar met Bart because of his recent interest in triathlons. They have competed in several races together. Rinar has a triathlon group and they do lots of races together.

Why not come for a visit?  Monica also has an uncle in town, so they had several people to visit, I guess.  My kids loved their kids. It was a really good match up.  Eli hung out with their Zachary, Harry and Julia played with Sophia, and Raef and Zach kept busy doing stuff with Natalie and Josh.

Of course, we had to go and see some of the sights.  We headed to Lake Tahoe and went to Sand Hollow.

 It was a hit!  They climbed on the rocks and then played for quite a while in the sand. There was a militant Canadian goose that we had to take on, as it seemed to think we were required to bring it food.  But besides that, it was pretty peaceful.  The weather was absolutely perfect.

Then we did a loop through Carson City and Virginia City.

Other highlights included going on a hike and doing absolutely nothing.

They left this morning and now we are left with loads of packing for our upcoming move. Can't wait.

The New Mrs. Stops By

Remember how my brother got married back in March?  Well, they ended up staying in Oregon through the summer. They have now emerged from marriage hibernation and headed back to Utah to get on with life this past weekend.  Yep, the irony...they have no kids, but no time.  I have no time because I have kids. You know what I am saying here?

Anyways, I digress. 

Reno is actually on the way to Utah from Oregon.  So they stopped by for the weekend.  They put on their Uncle and Aunt hats and really did a bang up job being cool Uncle Jamie and charming Aunt Leah.  The kids had a lot of fun with them.

I actually got a babysitter for Friday night and we went out to a nice dinner together at the Lodge and then followed it up with a mean game of miniature golf.  On the first hole, Leah got a hole-in-one.  I am sorry to say that it kind of fell apart after that, but she did have moments of brilliance. I suck at miniature golf, but I did my best.  Of course, Rinar won {yawn!}.

On Saturday, after some fun girl shopping in the morning, we took everyone to King's Beach on Lake Tahoe.

The kids really had a fun time. It was a bit crowded, but not horribly so.  Leah took this picture of Julia chill-axing on a raft.  We stayed for a few hours and then headed home. It was quite a lot of fun.

Stop by again sometime, you two lovebirds.

Our Family Reunion - Part I

I'm back!!!

It has been a crazy last few weeks. We moved into our house the first week, and have been unpacking non-stop for over a week. Then, once the unpacking was mostly done, we had a family reunion at our house for the following week.  Now everyone is gone and the dust is settling here in Reno. 

I will put some pictures up of the reunion over the next couple of days.

Enjoy.

Tru, Harry, Brielle, and Julia on our swing in the backyard.

Tru played so much and we stayed up so late, it took a couple of days, and then he crashed on the couch. He didn't move for about 2 hours. Not one muscle.

The grandparents arrived a day after Nordel and his family, and as soon as they walked through the door, we discovered a stowaway chipmunk in our laundry room. R.J. was assigned the task of chipmunk removal. It took him about an hour, but he got it done.

Grandma dressed and groomed Julia every day. She loved it!  Here is here Farrah Fawcett hairdo. Everyday the hair looked fabulous.

They got some bowling in. It was a lots of fun and Eli had a blast. Apparently, he also got the highest score of all the kids, 103!

We also went to Callahan Park and hung out for a bit. The weather was beautiful.

Uncle Nordel playing with the kids...how cute.

A lady at the park said it was warm enough to swim at Lake Tahoe. So, the day after the final families arrived we headed out to the lake, at Sand Harbor.  It is totally awesome. Look at that view...amazing.  The kids had a lot of fun, but the water was still freezing. In one month, it should be fantastic. I can't wait.

The water may have been cold, but the edge was fine enough for sand castle building.

Lindy sure had fun.

Grandma sat with the babies and fed them snacks.  Brielle had fun hanging out with Grandma.

After the beach, we drove to Truckee, California so that everyone could see the beautiful mountains and lake. We also went to Donner State Park and watched a movie at the visitors center.  The statue in the back of this picture commemorates the Donner Party.