Yosemite National Park

 We have been planning to go back to Disneyland since the last time we went in 2011.  We figured Ridge would be tall enough around his fourth birthday.  It turns out we had to wait until he was five+.  When he hit the magic mark we all cheered and started planning our trip to Disneyland.  Rusty has always wanted to visit Yosemite so we chose our route based on a stop in Yosemite for a hike and some sightseeing.  We left Boise on a Friday and stayed the night a few hours from Yosemite.  We left early the next morning, drove to, and entered the park.  We had done our research and had our hike picked out.  7 lakes in 7 miles.  The hike was great.  We got to eat some snow and icicles, skip rocks, throw snowballs, picnic by one of the lakes, and it was warm enough to shed the layers and enjoy short sleeves for a good portion of the hike.  That night we stayed about 1/2 an hour outside the park and entered again the next day.  We drove through and hit some of the drive and see sights.  That night we made it the rest of the way to Anaheim.  Disneyland coming up next!

Angel's Landing

 The day after we hiked the Subway Jenny had to head back to Albuquerque with Brianna and Jason following.  Jason had a mission in Alb. to ask Don if he could marry our sweet niece Brianna.  After we had the chance to spend a couple of days with Jason we were all for it.  Mike, Rusty, and I decided to hang around for a few hours and see more of Zions National Park.  Our first choice was hiking Angels Landing.  After all of the things I had read about the Subway hike on the internet I thought it was far less dangerous than the rest of the world thought.  Or atleast the people writing stuff about it on the internet.  Now Angels Landing, on the other hand, was about 100 times more dangerous than Subway with about 400 times the people.  It was crazy.  Every time you went up or down a set of chains you had to wait for a group of people who were traveling in the opposite direction.  And holy sheer cliffs batman.  I don't think I could take my kids on that hike without having daymares about them falling for weeks or months.  And I am not afraid of heights.  As usual, I was glad I did it despite the craziness.  One more thing to check off the list.

Subway- In Pictures

Mike and Russ in Moab

Jeff Peterson has been planning his 40th birthday party for some time.  He wanted all of his friends and family to meet in Moab for a long weekend of mountain biking.  Holly and I decided not to take the kids out of school so Mike and Rusty went alone for this one.  They spent the better part of a week riding several rides a day and having a blast.  It happened to be the same week we put in for and got a permit to hike Subway in Zions.  So the boys left Moab the same day I left Boise, Jenny left Albuquerque and Brianna and Jason left Rexburg and we met near Zions.  The next day we set off on our big Subway adventure........

I saw this snickers bar at a rite aid and had to buy it for Russ.  It says, "who are you when you are hungry?"  Answer-CRANKY.  And yes, if you have only met the normal, extremely happy Rusty, you may not believe me.  The cranky Rusty only comes out when there is a lack of food.  We try to keep him far, far, away.

Puzzle Walk of Fame

Ridge loves puzzles.  Sometimes he decides he wants to put together a whole bunch of puzzles and he lines them up all done in the hallway.  I leave them up until I can't stand the clutteryness of the puzzles in the hallway anymore and put them away while he is asleep.  Fun while it lasts.

Not sure why...

but Ridge really wanted to put stickers on our faces one day.