Arizona Wildlife

Nothing says "Arizona" like a black widow on a cactus!

 On a different recent walk, we found what we thought was a cute little frog. I posted a picture on Facebook and someone commented that it is a poisonous Colorado River Toad and that we should wash our hands right away. Sorry about that buddy :)

He liked it, poisonous or not

You can see it jumping off his tray to the left

 Aaron was really worried that night because Elliot was making sounds to himself for hours longer than usual after he was put to bed. I wasn't worried because he had taken an extra long nap that day, but Aaron was worried that Elliot was tripping on toad poison. 

We also have lions around here, but those are no big deal. 

Love the Safari Trail

We have seen some big ol' javelina from a distance on our walks. They were too far away and obscured by trees to get good pictures, so I had to look the internet. 

This is unrelated to  wildlife, but still cute. I went upstairs to change after volleyball one day. Elliot usually follows me, but instead he decided to climb on the table. I came downstairs to find him flipping through pages in my scriptures. 

Such a righteous young man! Now if only he could actually read them... or talk....

Volleyball Tournament

I played in a stake volleyball tournament... and won! My team was oh-so-creatively named Sah 2 since we were the second team from Sahuarita ward. Sah 1 ended up changing their name to something more creative, so we ended up being a sequel without an original. 

Undefeated Sah 2 with some of our little fans

We ended up playing for 5 or so hours with a few breaks, but skirmished most of the time during the breaks if a court was open. Some of our games were close, but we ended up undefeated in both the round robin and tournament. I am definitely sore today! I don't know how my dad plays for 6+ hours every Saturday. 

I'm in there somewhere

It was a blast, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Videos

I like to call this one "Laughter Gone Too Far"

A sampling of Elliot's animal sound repertoire

Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree is Elliot's favorite song. He also gets really into Ring Around the Rosie.

Elliot always shows off his muscles when he hits the page with the flexing toad in "The Little Blue Truck."

I made some play dough for Elliot. He enjoys poking it and having me pretend to eat him with it. It's like he can't quite figure out how to play with it on his own, but he loves it when I play with it with him. 

Aaron Gets Laser Eyes

Aaron looks like this now:

Not actually. He really looks like this:

Equally muscular, but the lasers went into his eyes, not out of them.

After much debate, Aaron decided to get laser eye surgery! He had to wear glasses instead of contacts for a few weeks in advance, and take a lot of eye drops the week of. The actual surgery only took about 20 minutes. Aaron said it was a really weird experience with lots of flashing lights, but he didn't feel anything other than a mild stinging and then pressure when they put the flap back on his eyeball (gross).

Spaceman glasses after getting his eyes dilated at a pre-op appointment

The recovery was really quick- he could see pretty well through his watery eyes immediately after the surgery. They gave him some muscle relaxant for the surgery and told him to keep his eyes for about 4 hours afterwards. I got a big kick out of guiding my blind husband to the car and up to his bed, where he got to take a super nap while wearing some fashionable ski goggles to make sure that he didn't rub his eyes while he slept. 

The goggles are to protect innocent bystanders from the blast of his laser eyes

After his nap, he woke up and felt totally fine! It has been a couple days now and he hasn't had any dryness or itchiness. We went out on a walk the evening of the operation. 

Who went from being blind as a bat to 20/15 vision? This guy!

The Last Day

On our last day, we were planning to stop at Big Sur. Unfortunately, there was a huge fire in the area and most of the coast was closed. We had to do some re-routing once we realized that we wouldn't be able to come close, but were able to snap some coastal pictures before we headed more inland. 

The internet says that this is what Big Sur looks like when it is not on fire or covered in fog

Not quite as scenic, but still pretty awesome

Our house for the last night was the nicest of our whole trip. It was a ranch style house, and we had access to their sweet pool and hot tub! Swimming around with the kids was great between long hours in the car. After the kids went to bed, we hung out in the hot tub. Aaron convinced Robb that sitting on the edge of the hot tub with your feet in the regular pool felt really nice. For some reason, Robb fell for that and ended up being pushed into the pool. It ended up being a beautifully executed belly flop. Lakin got to show case her mad water treading skills from her water polo days (she can do this egg beater thing with her legs that lifts her out of the water), and a snake made a cameo appearance when we were heading in for the night. 

The happily utilized pool from the outskirts of LA

The next morning was Sunday, so we hit up the local sacrament meeting before making the journey home and claiming the title of Unstoppable Road Warriors. 

I have never been on a trip like this before and it definitely had its merits. It was really nice that we didn't have any drives of longer than 7.5 hours. Some days it was only 2 or so. It was also great to be able to see so many new sites- I feel like we got a really good taste of California. This is definitely high ranking on the list of memorable vacations!

San Francisco

Our one Urban stop was San Francisco. We spent a night in an Airbnb house, then spent the next morning/afternoon braving public transportation to explore the city.

Popcorn in the house the night before hitting the city

Robb figuring out where we needed to go. Aaron and I are pretty much navigationally worthless. 

Being city slickers

Hays on a bus

Bloods on a bus

 We made our way to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. 

It was a wee bit chilly. Also wet everywhere. We got the impression from this trip that most of California is perpetually covered by fog or smog.

Pagoda!

Very steep archy bridge!

Koi fish that swam like sharks with their dorsal fins out of the water!

Reinforcing the image of Lakin as wonder woman

Elliot was outraged at the stones embedded in the concrete. Unforgivably deceptive!

We stopped for lunch, then bused our way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Friends by a bridge

Cool exhibit demonstrating why the suspension towers are the height that they are

There were some very aggressive and angry bikers on the heavily congested bridge, so all the kids got to be carried

Colby Quotes: "I am sad on the bridge. This is not a good place for me."

Everybody fell asleep on the bus/metro ride back to our cars

 After departing the big city, we drove into the wilderness to stay at Dayle's Airbnb campsite.

Claire Bear

The best part of the campsite for me was the compost toilet. It was nestled in a private redwood grove, making it the single most scenic bathroom I have ever had the pleasure to use. For some reason, every one else insisted on using the porta potty option. Something about walls. Weirdos.

The Loo with a View

The bucket was full of toilet paper and wood chips to cover your business. 

They also had a solar heated shower

Aaron and I were all set to use it, but someone else had already used up all the warm water.

Redwoods

Redwoods was voted the favorite park of the trip by all parties involved. The huge trees were similar to what we saw in Sequoia, but everything was far more overgrown and fern-y in Redwoods. Also, they have a beach! I definitely didn't realize that before this trip. 

Our first stop was the Klamath river overlook. Apparently it has a view of the river running into the ocean, but the entire thing was shrouded in fog so we couldn't see any of it. 

Picnic above the clouds

Alice, ever stylish, gives Elliot some messy face competition

Then we went for a short hike in what might as well be Jurassic Park. Or the Planet Endor from Star Wars (they filmed all the ewok scenes somewhere around here).

Robb kept making Ewok sounds for Colby and Alice

Lakin with her typical get up, and Aaron and Colby studying the sign in the background. Colby REALLY likes signs. 

Plants growing on plants. I have missed forests since moving to Arizona. 

They aptly named this one "Big Tree." it is smaller than General Sherman from Sequoia, even though it looks bigger since we could get closer to it. 

Blurry but adorable. He's a guy on the go!

Who says trees can't be horizontal?

Back in the beloved dirt

Robb's Endor speeder chase reenactment

He was much farther up than this picture gives him credit for

 Our other short hike was Fern Canyon. This was my favorite spot of the whole trip. I have never seen anything like it. 

The very aptly named Fern Canyon

You walked through the shallow creek on plank bridges. Colby loved it.

Elliot could care less about the bridges and ferns. He was all about throwing the rocks in the water. 

The view above the canyon

A deliciously climbable tree. Elliot was far too enthralled to stop throwing rocks long enough to look up at me.

Fern Man

 We camped at Gold Bluffs Beach that night. Robb has been talking about the wonder and glory of Gold Bluffs Beach since the earliest stages of planning this trip. We were promised astral planes and spiritual vortexes. 

Robb embracing his astral plane

The water was FREEZING cold. Probably around 40 degrees. 

Elliot was a pro at identifying the "wa wa"

Beachy Bloods or a Bloody Beach?

Colby loved being chased by the waves. He always pretends that things are chasing him even when they aren't, but I thought that the danger of being caught in the frigid waves would be too high stakes for him. But he loved it and we all ran from the waves for a long time and got our legs thoroughly numb. 

Being splashed by freezing water is an acceptable price for the joy of throwing sand in water

I caught a few sand crabs. Catching sand crabs will always remind me of being at Myrtle Beach with my dad growing up. I definitely missed the Myrtle Beach water temperature!

The bluffs before they were obscured by fog 

Not a bad view

No spiritual vortexes were spotted

 The only downside was that there was a sneaky spikey plant growing all over the place in the sand. Colby stepped on one barefoot. We had to lie him down while Robb pulled all of the stickers out. Poor guy.