Clear back on the 16th of July we did a little family party for my birthday and though we were small in numbers, I felt the LOVE!! :) Mairee made me a darling card, she drew me as a mermaid with long hair and a pink tira! Hazel scoured her house for some pretty amazing gifts. Natasha gave me some amazing cocoa and heaven sent oil for my brittle, dry, hair and skin. I only have pictures with Hazel, the darling sweetie...!!
My mom made me Chocolate Cheesecake!! It was so good!! My dad photo bombed the picture without us knowing, haha!! That's my favorite! Too bad the lighting is terrrible.
While Zach and Clarissa where in EUROPE !!!(SO WERE GABE AND JERICA!!) My Mom watched their kids off and on. It was fun to get the boys together to play! I have TONS of pictures of the boys, shirtless, because they all looked so cute together and they have such different personalities and different cute body types. Picture overload!!
Also, Calvin and his friend Lincoln are SO CUTE!!
Grandma and Grandpa Judkins invited all of us to go to their pool while my mom had Porter and Eli. That was a treat! It was a deep pool but with floaties on everyone we were able to make it work and all the kids had a really fun time; especially the older ones! Porter LOVED the water. Calvin did NOT. Porter wanted to drown half the time, he didn't even care, he WANTED his face to go under the water. Calvin did NOT. It was a funny contrast.
It was so nice to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa Judkins! A really nice morning!
We were able to go see Ethan in one of his tournament games!! It was so fun to watch that boy so focused, working so hard, hustling, and running SO fast!! I loved it!!
Jax was able to make his own ice cream and he was pretty excited. Sprinkles with a cherry on top!
I was finally the day to go on our family vacation to the Sequoias!! The kids were beyond excited. We gave them all an entire bag of chips for the occasion, i think that is what they were most excited about...!! :) Jaxton ate his entire bag before we got to Las Vegas. And he is never worse for wear! He feels fine, and probably would have eaten more if the bag was bigger! Rod is the self control king, he would eat a few and then save the rest for another hour, then eat a few. They are so different!
Our first stop was in St. George. We took the kids to Pioneer Park and let them hike around in the 100 degree weather. It was fun but IT WAS SO HOT!! We stayed for about 15-20 minutes and then we were outta there!!
We took the kids to get icee creams at Kilo's to cool off. They were a little rowdy (almost knocking over tables and flicking ice cream) and they didn't love the icee creams like Justin and I did. But I got a picture of everyone on their best behavior.
The 2nd stop of our trip was our Hotel in Las Vegas. It was great, the greatest thing about it was the POOL! My kids swam off 6 hours of being in the car, it was perfect. They LOVE swimming, and Calvin is getting there...
AND swimming with Dad is the BEST.
We made it to our lovely house in Three Rivers, (one of the more ugly places I've ever been to) the next day and there was this gigantic pine cone--a precursor for what was coming the following day at the Sequoia State Park! I thought it was a sequoia pine cone, because it was huge, but turns out sequoia pine cones are tiny! This huge pine cone belonged to the normal (but still big) pine trees.
Soon after we arrived we discovered that Justin and I had absolutely no reception on our phones. Like we couldn't even send a text message. We talked to some locals and apparently you need At&t or Verizon. Darn.
While we were waiting for my mom and dad to arrive, we went to the SMALL local store and the kids found a rock that reminded them of "Alex the Lion" from Madagascar. So they thought it was hilarious to pretend to be him. I loved it.
The next morning began as every morning on this vacation would. The boys playing video games in bed. It was so happy for them, and we were on vacation, so we let it happen. My mom and Dad usually beat us in waking up and were so helpful with the boys.
We got all ready and decided to go up and check out the Sequoias! We were only 5 windy miles away from the entrance to the Park. What we didn't realize was that it was an extra 50 minutes up an awfully windy road to even lay your eyes on a sequoia tree! Until then, the same ugly landscaping as the valley! Geeze, I wish we had known that earlier. Also, it was $30 to just get IN to the park! So on our LONG way up that darn mountain road of car-sickness we made a couple stops to break it up. Our first stop was at one of the rivers, there are 3 rivers (the town's name sake) and I guess they merge and flow their own ways, but are VERY dangerous. They are beautiful and very tempting to get in and close to because they have rock all around them and they are just so clean and smooth. However I guess they flow faster, and are deeper then they look. They had warnings everywhere:
It made you nervous to be there with your kids. So that was kind of a bummer because my kids love rivers and throwing rocks in rivers, but these were rivers you couldn't play by. We went down to look but very cautiously. Jax and Rod were very nervous. So was I, but it was so pretty. The landscape was so ugly, but the rivers--just beautiful.
Another stop we made was to look at the huge rock mountain. People were actually on the top of it!! We saw them through my dad binoculars! There was a railing, but there were definently people on there! It was a hike they had busses help you get to, Mom and Justin wanted to go, but I was against the idea, because I wanted what was left of my sanity to stay...!
We FINALLY made it up to the parking lot of the Big Trees! Geeze.
There are a lot of large rocks in the landscape there and everyone loved to climb them! This one was in the parking lot.
Here are some pictures by the first Sequoia we got close to. You just can't tell the scale in a picture.
Calvin carried his binoculars around almost the whole day. It was pretty cute.
These pictures were cute because Calvin was just chatting with my dad. I love moments like this.
Our first stop was to go see the General Sherman tree that is 3,500 years old! He was so big, but again, you will have a hard time understanding it's magnitude through a picture!
In these pictures below we are pointing to the General Sherman Tree in the distance. It is HUGE. But honestly, all the sequoias are huge. Click and zoom on the picture to see the actual people that are standing right below it. that will help with understanding the scale.
Can you find my dad's face in the tree crack on the left? Justin is on the Right. They are different trees and different cracks. :) So many cool tree formations.
Justin loved the way the moss grew on random bark on the ground spontaneously.
There were just so many cool tipped trees and roots and split trees and hollow trees and just HUGE trees and small trees. Every tree. The Sequoias are the coolest to me. They are just so huge and red!
If you can zoom in on Calvins face here, you should! It's the best!!
We started to be starving so we decided to call it a day, and after going DOWN that awful mountain, we decided we could only do it one more time. Jaxton in this pictures is classic.
So the next day, instead of going back to the park as we planned originally, we did some extra fun stuff, it was more of a swimming day; but we had to get creative. Also of note was the AMAZING meal we got at "Sierra Salads and Subs" that night! I will dream about the salad I got for years to come, also the greek quesadilla, and the sandwiches...Dear me, we should have eaten every meal there. Sadly, no pictures of the amazing food. But, more pictures to come!
