Half Dome 2012

About a year ago, my Uncle Tod told Rob and I about his trip to Yosemite National Park and his climb of Half Dome.  Rob and I had been to Yosemite with the family a couple of years ago and had seen Half Dome off looming in the distance and thought it would be fun to actually conquer the mountain.  When Tod let us know that he was putting a group together for this summer we eagerly threw our names in the hat.

Here's the group!!  It included my uncle Tod, his 3 sons, Drew, Ben, and Calvin,Tod's niece Angie, my uncle Wayne, and his kids, Josh and Chloe, and then 3 of Tod's friends, Sandy, Brandon, and Lou.  We had 2 guides for a total of 15 in our group.  We headed out about 7:30 on Thursday morning.

This is the first fall that we came to, Vernal Falls.  Take note of the stairs...yes that's the trail...up and up and more up...almost the never-ending stairmaster!

A little break while taking in Vernal Falls.

 Here is the base of the next fall, Nevada Falls.  

More stairs...up...up...up

Here's Rob, with the gorgeous view, at the top of Nevada falls.  After climbing close to 2,000 vertical feet we had lunch! :)

After lunch it was only about 45 more minutes of hiking until we came to this glorious swimming hole!!  We camped for the night at a camp site right next to this swimming hold called Little Yosemite Valley.  We got to the campground between 1 and 2, and so we had the afternoon to relax and swim before getting ready for our 3 am wake up call!

We were up and eating about 3 am and on the trail by 4 am.  We hiked all morning in the dark and reached the sub-dome of Half Dome just in time for this glorious sunrise!!  I must admit that I rarely am awake for the sunrise but the view was totally worth the early rise!!

Here we are on top of the sub-dome...we're about to get a peak at the cables that you scale in order to reach the top of Half Dome.  You'll notice we're still happy...I got REALLY nervous once I saw the cables.

Here they are!!  I wish the picture did them justice!!  The last 400 ft...after having climbed about 3,000 vertical feet that morning, is a steep climb up holding on to 2 steel cables for balance while your feet cling to little 2 x 4's that are placed in about 10 ft increments.     

Here we are, still happy before the climb!!

Here's Tod on the cables.  It gives you a little more perspective of the steepness of the route.

Rob, who is deathly afraid of heights, wasn't too excited about me standing out on a ledge that has a drop off just below it that is thousands of feet high!!

Here's the whole group at the top!!  

The descent down the cables may have been a little more nervous than the assent.  Rob wasn't very happy when he saw that I had taken a picture in the middle of the cables!

The perfect day to be out enjoying Yosemite!!

Here's part of the group after the 5,000 ft descent!!  I honestly think the descent was harder on the body than going up!!

Here is a beautiful view of Half Dome from Olmstead Point.  Rob and I pulled over to get one last look on our way out of the park.  What an amazing adventure and definitely one to put on the check list!

Utah Lake with the Blackwells

A couple of Saturday's ago, we were sitting around the house bored out of our minds... Luckily, the Blackwell's were up for an impromptu boat ride on Utah Lake!!  It was tons of fun to go with kids that are a little older than our own, because they were a little more excited about trying wake boarding and tubing than our kids are! 

 Here's Jess and Isabel watching Max try wake boarding for the first time.

This little stud, only 9 years old, was up and going on the wake board after only a handful of tries!  We won't mention that it took me like 2 whole summers of trying before I actually got up!

 Disheveled Taylor!!  

 Jess was a stud also!!  Up in like 4 tries!  I like to think it's because she had at least water skied before! 

 Joe loved driving the boat!!

 So did Isabel....

and Max.  Thanks Blackwells for an awesome afternoon on the lake!

My Little Snow White

This is the smile of a girl that is seriously happy!!  Rob and I had some shopping that we needed to get done and we needed a way to convince Taylor that she wanted to behave until we where done shopping!!  Well, a month or two ago I got a credit card application from Disney that offered me a $200 Disney gift card for applying for their card and making ONE purchase with it!!  I'm no dummy and soon we had 200 buckeroos to spend at the Disney store.  I would have never purchased this dress without it!!  But why not make a little girl's day with free money!  

We asked her in the car which dress she wanted and she responded without a pause, "Snow White!"  Well upon entering the store, she wanted every dress that she saw!  The clerk was so helpful (insert sarcasm) and informed Taylor that she could try on as many dresses as she wanted!  I informed Taylor that she could try on ONE dress because come to find out they have a full on bridal sweet for these little girls to try on dresses!!  So we finally found the Snow White dress and she was SURE that it was the one she wanted and that she wanted to try it on.  Before I could even get the dress off the rack and turn around to hand it to her, Taylor had stripped down to her underwear!!  I was shocked to say the least when I turned around and found her there in her panties!!  It was a fight to get her clothes back on while trying to explain to her that we had to go to another room to actually try on the dress.  Well, long story short...we have one very happy girl and it's the gift that keeps on giving.  All I have to say is that I'm going to take her Snow White dress away for the day and she shapes right up!!

Lake Powell

Well...about an hour into our journey to Lake Powell, Rob's parents' suburban decided to almost die on us!!  Instead of risking the rest of the journey, we unhitched the boat and sent the suburban back to switch out for the truck while we stayed and camped out on the boat for a couple of hours!  Luckily it was overcast and not too bad.

Here's the boat...FULLY LOADED.  Becky, my mother-in-law, was a little nervous that we wouldn't float!

 Here are some fun pictures of our 3 days on the lake!!  We spent a lot of time just sitting in the water and also, just sitting on the boat!  It was nice to be out and just relax.

 We found a little cove that we like and decided to call camp, and found this little gem as we set up camp.  Someone obviously spent a lot of time constructing it, and Taylor enjoyed playing with it.

We wake boarded one morning for all of 30 minutes.  Here's the extent of my wake boarding...get up...fall down...get up...fall down...I was just a little sore the next day.

 Tay with her life jacket and Grandma's dress on!!

 Jenna, Tay, Grandpa, and I hike a little bit to some Indian ruins!!  There is a cellar just below us that was about 20 degrees cooler...I could have stayed there for hours!

 Tay loved to drive with Dad!

 Jord's favorite seat was up front with Grandma with the wind in her hair!!

 The only way that we could get Jord to nap was by taking a boat ride!!  So every day after lunch we'd head out on the boat for a long ride!!

 This just sums up Rob's excitement for about everything we did on this trip!!  Poor boy was having allergy trouble!

 Tay and I did a little tubing!!  She's getting to be a little dare devil!

 Oh...and the beautiful sunset each night!!

Yellowstone

Some friends mentioned that they wanted to go to Yellowstone and we thought that sounded like a good idea!!  It was a beautiful trip...if only Jordan had cooperated!!  3 days in the car is not the ideal trip for a 17 month old!!  Rob and I decided that we would do the trip again someday...when all the kids are at least 8 years old!! :)  It could be a while!

This is West Thumb Geyser Basin.  Here are some pictures of the girls cheesing it up!  I decided to play a little with the camera and actually liked how some of the black and white pics turned out!

The only animal that Taylor really wanted to see was a bear.  Here she is with a buffalo and she thought that was pretty cool but still wanted to see a bear.  We saw lots of elk, a cow moose, lots of bison, a fox, oh and a bear...too bad Taylor was sleeping for the bear!!  Poor girl.

We tried to get a family picture at Old Faithful...you can tell for yourself how that went!! 

Finally...an ok family picture.  Too bad it's at such a distance!

We enjoyed our evening out of the car!!  Especially Jordan!  We played at the camp site and walked down to the lake and had fun throwing rocks into the lake!!

Here's Taylor proud of her marshmallow!!  I'm pretty sure this is the first one that she did all by herself!!  Well, maybe not the actual first one...I'm sure there were some black ones before this, but this one she thoroughly enjoyed!