Rivers End Rafting

We had a little family adventure yesterday and went white water rafting with the two older kids.
Katie looked nervous over every rapid, Ryan had a great time, and none of us were tossed overboard.
(However, we DID get out and enjoy the river over the "Swimmer's Rapids.")
We hope to go again next summer. It was exactly the kind of thing we love to do!
(Rachel, come back and go with us next summer!! We missed you!)

Guess Who's Growing Up

This little one is going to be 3 in about 6 weeks.
To my delight, she has decided to start getting herself potty trained.
I don't like bargaining and begging and pleading and stressing, so I don't potty train kids anymore.
If they want to be big kids, they have to figure it out.
I don't remind her about using the potty, she just has to listen to her own body signals.

The past few days have gone swimmingly. Only 1 accident in 2 days, and she'll just head to the bathroom when she needs to do her business and doesn't ask me for any help. I'd call that the road to success.

Petting Zoo

We joined some sweet friends on a trip to a nearby petting zoo.

Jimmer mostly wanted to eat the food we were feeding the bunnies and guinea pigs.

These goats were pretty pushy.

I didn't do a fancy editing job on this photo - it was super washed out so I had to add some shadows just so the girls' faces were more visable. I wanted to add this picture because I made my kids BYU shirts with freezer paper stencils and fabric paint. Ryan's says "You Got Jimmered" and is pretty spiffy, if I say so myself. Also, Millie's shirt IS blue, it just is a different blue than Katie's.

Jimmer and Helmets

Pretty much this boy is a magnet to anything related to sports.
Balls, helmets, gloves, bats, skateboards, scooters, bikes, etc.

The skateboard is the worst - with the scooter being a close second. I'm not fond of him swinging that bat around, either.

After

Here is Katie's new haircut.

More Hiking and a Rope Swing

I couldn't watch him cross this log.
He is usually very capable - but he was wearing Crocs and they are really slippery when they are wet!

How the Littles Camp

Millie and Jimmer had a pretty good time - but I had to get over the fact that they were always covered in dirt. If they weren't finger/thumb suckers it wouldn't be so bad...

Here Millie is collecting shells and rocks. This was a FUN beach! There were so many things to look at, but no one was getting sandy.

Millie was eating a bag of granola and James was following her around and she'd feed him. We got some pretty amusing video of these two.

And here they are splashing around near Morrow Rock. We collected a total of 86 sand dollars on this beach. It was AWESOME!

Coast of Northern California

These are views near Big Sur.

Waterfall Hike

During Spring Break, we went camping with some good friends to northern California. We enjoyed some beautiful hikes in the middle of big redwoods!

Released

All 5 butterflies successfully emerged from their cocoons. Yesterday, we took them from their temporary home and released them into the world. Here is to a propitiation of the species.



This swallowtail was just a visitor - but he was big and beautiful!