Yosemite

Pam kindly made reservations at Yosemite and invited us along.  It was great to see Yosemite again, but oh, man, trip could have gone better. Went to pick up Ian and he was sick - running a fever. Got a slightly later start than I'd hoped, but even leaving at 4 we still ran into traffic, traffic, traffic. Which left the kids moaning and groaning about wanting to get out of the car. We did finally stop at an In and Out and had dinner.

With the stop and the traffic, we were going to be about 5 hours getting there, and almost before dark. Well, Isabella threw-up on the twisty turny road into Yosemite, so add another half an hour. She was fine after losing dinner (mostly onto her towel, thankfully) and was mollifed by having a marshmallow.

Your's truly forgot the tent poles. Sigh. So I slept in the back of our car, Bill in the back of Pam's. Double sigh. And of course Ian wasn't feeling well, so he didn't sleep so well. But anyways, we had a lovely site - not packed in like the neighbors - and a little creek to play in, so all was good in the morning.

By the time we finished breakfast, got lunch packed, walked to the bus, took the bus to the lower falls it was time for lunch. We wandered a bit off the path (crossing over the stream, which was a bit fun with small people). It was nice, though, with the water running by you didn't notice the hordes of people walking to the falls.

After lunch we headed towards the falls again (no, we hadn't even made it to the falls!) Ian fell asleep, only to be woken up by the cold water blowing over him. Argg. We had a nice long rest at the rest room, followed by another bus ride. We had thought of walking to another falls, but gave up and went and had ice cream instead. Much better choice. There was a girl doing cartwheels so Isabella joined in. Ian still wasn't feeling so good, so it was lots of mom carry small child around.

By that time it was dinner time, so back to the camp site! I played hold the baby while Bill and Mom made dinner. He fell asleep for a bit, but then woke up again. Snored all night long. Loudly.

Sunday we actually went climbing! Outside! Pam set up a top rope for us and we went up the (nice and easy?) climbs. Isabella even went up one of them, with some help from Mom. Then she spent an enjoyable amount of time climbing the big boulders round about.

Unfortunately, we didn't get Ian to take a nap. Silly me, thought he'd fall asleep on the ride home. Instead, he practiced his Nazgul scream most of the way home, inbetween fighting with his sister. We stopped for a while at a playground and let them run around. Didn't help. Gave up at some point and pulled off the road at a truck scales to close Isabella's window and stuff something between them to get them to stop fighting and poking each other. Cop pulled up while we were doing this - we asked, but he wasn't willing to drive the kids home!

The foam pad between the kids worked until they figured out how to move it. Then it became a chew toy - Ian took several large chunks out of it with his sharp and pointy teeth.

We stopped at a Cindy's restaurant where they sort of ate and mostly tried to run around the restaurant.

Oh yeah, they fell asleep about 5 minutes from the house.