A few pictures

Douglas and Tobin fooling around in line






Elizabeth, Luke, and Emmy graduating from Discovery Preschool last night







Douglas and Charlotte at the graduation








Helena and Douglas






Owen and Caleb. They are looking forward to their joint birthday party on July 11.

Dude, got any munchies?

I could totally go for some Doritos right now.

Smoke

From the Davis Enterprise, this is a picture from Yolo County that pretty much shows what the air looks like here.

Smoky

There are over 1000 fires burning in California and it seems like most of them are dumping smoke into our air. The air is whitish yellow and the sun is orange. I tried running yesterday morning and it felt like being at high elevation; just couldn't get enough air. We are supposed to stay indoors mostly although that's hard to do with the two kids. I did take them on a bike ride to a park after supper (Dan was at work until 11:30 last night).

Here's a map from the SacBee of where the fires are burning.

Yosemite

I think this is the only picture we have of the four of us on this trip...

Yosemite

We are just back from a trip to Yosemite! We had a great time.

The kids had a lot of fun. In this picture they are getting the closest we got all week to a bear.









Yosemite Falls is one of the multitude of waterfalls around the park.







Dan enjoying a little morning coffee.





We were staying on the eastern end of the valley at Curry Village, which sits in the shadow of Half Dome. People climb this as a day hike, but it's around 17 miles round trip with a more than 3000 foot elevation gain. The last bit is a cable climb up the rock. Needless to say, we won't be attempting it any time soon. You can also spend the night up there so as to make it a two day trip, but they don't give out many permits for that, so most people have to do it in one day.




Dan, Owen, and Douglas in a meadow in the middle of the valley (near the Swinging Bridge, which no longer swings).







Owen in the meadow.








Owen and me on the Swinging Bridge, which crosses the Merced River. Yosemite Falls is visible in the background.









The kids had fun throwing rocks into the Merced River. It was mighty cold. Snowmelt doesn't warm up much between the snow and the valley. Yosemite is at around 4000 feet elevation.






Douglas enjoying some ice cream.








Owen and Douglas on another bridge







Douglas goofing around








Douglas at the Curry Village amphitheater. We saw a fantastic presentation one evening about bats. Meanwhile, some bats were flying around above our heads. It was pretty cool.






Owen and Douglas hanging out, with El Capitan in the background behind the tree.








Owen en route to Bridalveil Fall. It was a short hike (1 mile round trip).





Bridalveil Fall. At the bottom we got a bit damp.





Our tent cabin. We were fortunate that ours was somewhat set away from some of the other ones so it was not too loud, and also was right near the bathrooms and the swimming pool, which we took advantage of. The tent cabin had four rudimentary beds but they did have mattresses, sheets, wool blankets and pillows. It got pretty cold in the mornings (daytime was maybe in the 80s) so we made good use of the wool blankets. There was also a light bulb so we were able to read. It was just fine as a place to stay. On the right at the bottom you can see the green bear box for putting food and toiletries (toothpaste, soap etc) in. It appeared to be sealed but this morning when I went to get our stuff out of it I noticed some little critter had been gnawing on a granola bar we had in there.



This was as close as we got to seeing a bear. We did take a nature walk with a park ranger and she asked who'd seen a bear in the park, and about half the group raised their hands. We did not see one, though.







We did see some other wildlife though, like this deer...





Some Stellar's Jays... (about which the park ranger said, "Mother Nature likes funky hairdos too, huh?").






There were lots of butterflies around.






Another deer we saw on one of our walks.

We had a great trip!

Last day of school!

Yesterday was the last day of school. Owen was quite pleased!

Here he is fooling around with his friend Noah, who was in his class this year.





And giving a squeeze to his buddy Silas.







Here he is with his teacher. She told me that she has recommended that he be in a 3rd and 4th grade combination class next year, which has a very good teacher. Hopefully that will work out.

Recent pictures

Some recent pics of the family.

Dan and Douglas during Owen's last baseball game on Saturday morning (the consolation game; they played in the playoffs for the National League and came in 2nd, so played in the consolation game. They lost that one to the Yankees).





Owen getting a hit off the coaches. If the kids pitch 4 balls the coaches pitch. The kids do a lot better hitting off the coaches than off the kids.







Douglas and Dan.




Douglas waiting patiently for the game to be over - thanks mainly to a new airplane toy.








The National League championship.







Batting time.







Artichokes in our garden!









Owen and Nathan fooling around in the dugout.






Owen receiving his medal as a member of the National League runners-up.