Birthday Trip

For Dad's birthday yesterday, we took a trip to Yosemite for the day. It was a beautiful day for a trip, warm but not hot.This is my first and only picture of Yosemite Valley because my camera decided to run out of battery. Thankfully, I had my charger and we were able to charge it while we drove so I wasn't without it for long. We stopped to have a picnic lunch by the river and it was a beautiful spot. We had sandwiches and chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert. The chocolate cake was super rich, chocolaty, and delicious. Then we went a little farther downriver and stopped to take some pictures. I had my camera back by then, whew.The boys had fun playing by the river.We decided to drive up to Glacier Point because it has a great view of the park and none of us kids had been there before. Almost everyone fell asleep on the way up, but once we arrived we were happy to get out and look around. The views were indeed amazing. Michelle, Jonah, and I were impressed that we had climbed Half Dome, it is so big, and were inspired to do it again.Natalie was fearless looking over the edge.Everyone wanted to take pictures of the reflection in Isaac's sunglasses.One last view from the top. Then we headed back down the mountain and into Oakhurst where we had dinner at Todd's Steakhouse. It was crowded when we were ordering, but they gave us a room in the back all to ourselves and it was great. Good food too. We made it back to Visalia about 9:30pm and quickly unloaded the Nickells before coming home. All in all, it was a great and beautiful day.

Today at Work

I opened for the first time today since I started working at Wildflower last fall. That meant being to work at 6:00am, particularly bothersome after closing last night at 9:15pm. However, it wasn't bad overall, due in large part to the season. Getting up early and going to work reminded me of summer at camp because our AM shift started at 6:00 too. Besides, getting up early in the summer is easier than the winter because at least it is light outside, waking up in the dark is disorienting. And speaking of disorienting, it was a weird day at work because we were super slow, we never had a breakfast rush or lunch rush, not even a coffee and muffin rush. We did have some people come in, but not many. So we tried to keep ourselves occupied by doing extra baking and cleaning. At the suggestion of a customer, I frosted these sugar cookies like pirate ships and love how they turned out. I also made butterscotch swirl brownies and Sierra and I frosted this camouflage cake that was a special order for a veterans appreciation dinner.

Floating

Yesterday for Memorial Day Michelle, Jonah, and I met up with Mary, Heidi, and Phillip and their friend, Isaac, to go floating down the St. John's river. Our first stop was WalMart to buy some cheap tubes, then on to the river. We dropped off a car at the end point, then all piled into Phillip and Heidi's truck, boys in the front

and girls in the back. It was a tight squeeze, but we didn't have far to go. We parked farther up river and set out. Unfortunately, this was a new starting spot for all of us except Isaac and he forgot to mention that we had to walk a way to reach the river. Most of us left our shoes in the car because we thought it was just a quick walk to the river, instead we ended up burning our feet on the hot ground over the longer distance. It hurt really bad and we developed blisters. But finally we made it. However, once we reached the river, Heidi didn't notice some barbed wire on the ground and set her tube on it, which of course immediately put a hole in her tube. We tried to find something to fix it with, but had no luck, so Heidi had to plug the hole with her finger the whole time. It ended up being successful and she kept her tube full the whole time. We started getting in the river and it was so cold, then the clasp on my swimsuit top broke. All in all, this was seeming like a disastrous trip. Michelle and Mary were able to tie my swimsuit back together with the detachable strap that goes around my neck and finally we set off. Once on the river, things improved and we had an enjoyable float downstream. The sun was out and the river was peaceful.

For the most part, we stayed connected to each other and floated down in a clump. Once you got used to the water, it wasn't so bad, at least while the sun was out. For the second half of our ride, it was mostly cloudy and then we started getting cold. We reached our end spot and climbed out, then waited while Heidi and Jonah drove back to get the other vehicle. Then we said goodbye and Michelle, Jonah, and I came back home to rinse off before having a BBQ dinner with the rest of the family. We had tri tip with frozen chocolate peanut squares for dessert, mmmm.