camping is certainly an adventure…in insanity

A few weeks ago we made our pilgrimage to Yosemite.  It was … interesting.

Emma loved everything about camping except nighttime.  The first two of the three nights her nose bled.  And when I say ‘bled’ I mean to say, bled all over her face and sleeping back and jammies.  The first night we were there she slept on this thing:

Good in theory.  Bad in practice.  It’s a sleeping bag that’s sort of attached to an air mattress.  The air mattress is more like an inflatable raft you take into the pool.  Slightly uncomfortable and VERY LOUD.  So the noise she made moving her around kept her from really falling asleep and kept me from sleeping at all.  She whimpered a bit and tossed and turned until she just woke up completely and started crying.  I got up to calm her down and noticed darkness all over her face.  Grabbed a flashlight and almost had a heart attack when I realized the darkness was blood.

Not.  Fun.

Eventually I brought her into my sleeping bag (I got a ‘big & tall’ bag and it was perfect for fitting either my preggo pillow or a fussy 5 year old) around 5 in the morning.  She slept for a couple of hours and I slept for around an hour.

The first full day at Yosemite was …. long.

We did make it to the valley later in the morning.  Our campground was about 30 minutes or so from the valley.  We headed out with really no plan whatsoever.  Walked around for a bit, but the kids were really tired (and me too) so we didn’t really hike around like we planned.  We did get ice cream and the kids participated in a scavenger hunt that the park puts on and they had fun with that.  I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought I would, as I wanted to, but I did get some.

Just some ground cover.  I thought it looked purty.

Dominic hitching a ride with Ji-Chan.

My brother, looking excited.

Trying to decide what kind of ice cream to get.

Working diligently on their scavenger hunt pictures.

The obligatory picture of Half Dome.

Mossy.

Chloe kicking back.

Sunshiny day.

Before we headed out to Yosemite we got an email from Park Services informing us that nearby our campsite they would be doing a controlled burn of several acres.  Luckily, we weren’t really affected by the smoke, but it was much closer than we thought it would be.

It’s hard to see during the daytime, but this was from the campsite across from us.  From there you could see across the road where they were doing the burn.  All day and during the night as well we could hear trees falling.  I couldn’t believe how loud it was!

Much easier to see at night!  Nuts & crazy and luckily the kids were sleeping when we saw this.  Though Dominic was pretty stoked to see all the fire fighters and trucks!

Despite all the pitfalls we did have a good time.  I love camping, the tents and sleeping bags, s’mores and all the camping food.  It’s just fun and nostalgic.  Plus we were there with some of my favorite people.  Next time though, I think we’ll stay a little closer to home!

s’more please!!

Last night we had, as Emma called it ‘the best family fun night ever!’  Ray bought a fire pit/bowl thingy because I’ve always wanted one.  It was very exciting when he brought it home!  Guess what my main plan is??

Yup.  S’mores.  They’re really the only reason to build a fire, right?

So we built up the fire.

Emma got tired of playing around in the sprinklers so she came and sat down with Ray and they discussed why Doritos are so yummy.

After dinner we started roasting our marshmallows.  Emma and I caught ours on fire.  Then my baby girl got her first taste of s’morey goodness!

She liked it.  How could you not??

Afterwards I played around with my camera, the sunset and bokeh.

Turned out not so bad.

Look at our pretty, but dirty patio lights.  I ♥ them.

I’d have to agree with Emma.  This was the best family fun night ever.

can you really kill 2 birds with 1 stone?

I’m not a hunter.  I don’t understand sport hunting at all.  The closest I get would be fishing I guess, though I don’t do that very often at all.  And I usually don’t keep anything I catch except for one time when I couldn’t get the hook out of the fish and freaked out.  We had that fish for dinner.

Anyway.  There is a bird outside that has made our tree in the backyard his home.  It’s just the one bird and he is LOUD.  He begins screaming at around 4 am and doesn’t stop until sometime around midnight.

I can hear him right now.  Doors and windows closed.

I would like to kill this bird.

Now.

the great aphid attack of 2011

I started noticing an alarming number of aphids collecting on our rosebushes next to our driveway.  I kept thinking I would need to do something about it, but I just kept forgetting.  Then I noticed that the rosebushes at the front of the house were infected.  Ugh.  So began the war on the aphids.

We went to Johnson’s Garden Center and bought three containers with 1500 lady bugs each.  

We waited until nighttime when it’s cooler.  Lady bugs don’t fly at night so if you scatter them on the bushes at night they’ll crawl around and discover the aphids instead of flying away immediately.  This is what the roses looked like before we let the lady bugs go.  So many aphids!!

Here’s one little guy the next day wandering around.

This is the same rose bush I took a picture of the night before.  HUGE difference!  We still have a long way to go.  Hopefully the lady bugs will start laying their eggs and make the rose bushes their home.  Then we’ll be able to keep the aphids under control.

The other bad deal about aphids is that they attract ants.  The ants eat the honeydew that the aphids excrete.  Did you know that ants will actually farm aphids!?  They’ll take aphid eggs back to their nest to protect in case they have to move to another home.  If they do move the queen will take one egg with her (aphids don’t need mates to reproduce) and start a new aphid farm wherever she goes.  It’s quite a symbiotic relationship, but I don’t want any part of it!

Happy eating little ladies!

glimpses of the weekend

This weekend was a busy one.  We went to check out my sister’s new house and then we had a combined birthday party for Emma, Paris & Johnathan.  It was a long weekend full of family and fun!

Beautiful backyard!

So many pretty flowers blooming in the yard.

Chloe seemed to be the only one interested in bubbles.

Emma’s roasting her rock ‘marshmallow’.

Dominic is showing me that it’s a moon rock, not a marshmallow.

Across the street, a castle in the front yard!

Cute tea party decoration at the birthday party.  Paris had a Mad Hatter Tea Party the weekend before with her school friends.

So excited to be in matching dresses!

Cupcakes by Sweet Simple Things.  Always awesome!

Even though Aaron’s not a ‘little’ kid he can’t escape the Happy Birthday song!

I don’t know why, but I love this picture so much!  My nephew is seriously the cutest little boy I know.  He ate all his lunch and waited patiently for his cupcake and then he ate all the frosting and asked for another!  He’s usually so on the go it’s hard to catch a good picture of him.  I might just have to print this one up and put it on the wall!

So that was our busy weekend.  Glad to have survived it!  Now Emma’s counting down the days until her birthday party with all her preschool friends and other buddies.  We go from a party with 6 kids to a party with around 20 kids.  *sigh*  Least we have a couple of weeks to prepare for that one!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Here’s looking forward to a quiet week.  I hope!

photo rejects

Going to my mom’s house is always a photo paradise for me.  She has so many different flowers blooming all over the place.  I love to whip my camera around and see what kind of pictures I can get.  I think besides taking pictures of Emma, nature (mainly flora) is my favorite thing to capture. 

I took these yesterday.  They’re all straight out of the camera with no editing except the little know-it-not-so-much watermark.  All but the poppy are from my mom’s yard.  The poppy comes from her neighbor Yubert’s front yard.  He’s also quite the dynamo when it comes to gardening.  These didn’t make it to my Project 365, but I really wanted to share them anyway.  Hope you enjoy!

Daytripping

It was a beautiful day in Monterey today.

We spent most of the time at Dennis the Menace Park.  When I was a kid we used to go there a lot.  One of my favorite memories of the park is my Uncle Richard taking my sister, brother and I out to the park and then for ice cream afterwards.  I still love going there.

Get ready for some super Emma time.

After we went to the park we headed over to the aquarium.

There’s a little exhibit where you pledge to do something that will help the environment.  Use reusable bags, ride a bike instead of driving, etc.  You get your picture taken and then the big screen above shows you doing your activity.

When I was going through the photos I found the picture we took of Emma in the train at Dennis the Menace Park when we went with my sister & Dave back in 2007.  Emma was just over a year old!

Awww, my little baby is so grown up!

What did you do this fine Saturday?  Anything fun?