After Bodie, California we headed up to Halfway, Oregon. MacKay has a lot of family there and they invited us to their reunion. All three boys had their first experience on a boat and on a raft. Ethan also caught his very first fish and only fish so far. We will probably go visit again next summer and so maybe he can catch his second fish. We all had a blast with our cousins.

Yosemite Day 3

Our original plan had been to camp three nights here, but we hadn't realized how far our campsite really was from Yosemite and it was our first time camping with three little boys. So even though our second night was much better than our first we decided we would spend the day in Yosemite and then head on out to Bodie which is a really cool ghost town about two hours away from Yosemite. Every stop we made could have easily had a lot more time spent at them, but we had lots we wanted to do and the boys could only handle so much at a time and the same really goes for MacKay and me too.

We made a couple of stops on our way to our campsite. Mono Mills, Mono Lake and Tuolumne Meadows visitor center. We drove all the way through Yosemite National Park with only one stop I believe to use the restroom, but that wasn't our destination for the day. Just to get into Yosemite we had like an hour and a half wait or longer. It was crazy. I made lunch for the family in the van. MacKay and other motorist were getting out of their vehicles taking pictures and having conversations. It was pretty entertaining actually. We made it to our campsite and got all set up. Let me tell you we were not prepared for how cold and hard the ground was going to be. We didn't originally plan on going anywhere besides Yosemite for this stop, but we did.

We had to do something to make camping there more enjoyable so we decided to go to Fresno to pick up some supplies (about two hours outside of Yosemite) and then we saw that Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park were not to much further (about two hours also from Fresno). So we made a last minute decision to go there. We now had a lot of the day already eaten up so we didn't see a lot of these two in one national parks. They are home to some of the worlds largest trees. Grant Tree is the second largest there. This picture doesn't do it justice as to how big it is. There is one tree there that we saw that had fallen over and you could walk through it. I was pretty much able to walk stand straight up through the entire thing. The boys had a blast running and playing inside it. We headed back to our campsite which was about half way between Fresno and Yosemite. Spent the night and packed everything up the next morning.

So today I decided to take a look at one of my friend's blogs and she posted all her goals for this year. One of which is updating her blog weekly. Well that isn't going to happen for me, but it did remind me that I am about 4 months past when I should have posted about our great adventure this past summer.

In July MacKay, myself, Ethan, Myron and William took a four week road trip. Let me tell you it is one of the best things that I have ever done. I feel very privileged to have had the chance to do it. We started off by heading to California. First stop was at the Salt Flats. The boys ran a pretty good distance out on the flats (even little Will). After a short stop there we continued on. We turned off at Wendover and headed south. I am not sure where we stayed the night. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Nevada at a rest stop. The night was spent in our awesome van that we bought for this trip, and it was pretty comfy given that it was packed full.

We have an adventure coming up in a couple of weeks and I promise I will post pics and share our stories.

Halloween

Star Wars, and yes that is really all my hair. The boys had a lot of fun dressing up and going trick or treating. We started Saturday off by heading down to Payson for a Puppet show, then back home or our ward trick or treating chili dinner. After it rained for a while I took the boys out to a few houses. Ethan could not keep his balance and fell around 5 times. Needless to say his poor sword/light saber didn't make it.

I'm Going to be Better

Okay so there are often months between post, but I am going to try and start posting more frequently. Which means I will need to remember how to get the pictures working so I can post them too. I promise I will post some pics soon and there will be a Halloween post in a couple weeks.