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.

Picking Blueberries

Jaime and I got to go on a field trip with the Nickells and Mom today to pick blueberries. We started by having a picnic in the parking lot, Heather and I brought so much good food that after eating we were ready for a nap instead of blueberry picking. The boys were ready to go.

We got to eat as many blueberries as we wanted while we picked, they were good.

We had a good time and filled up a big bucket of berries.

Here are some videos from the day. We used some of our blueberries to make a delicious blueberry crisp for dessert, which was particularly appropriate because we had surprise guests, our friend Garrett and some of his friends who were on a road trip.

Graduation Celebration

Sunday night we had a celebration for my graduation. Everyone helped make a delicious dinner. Jaime making grilled vegetables. Michelle and Jonah made steaks, Mom, Heather, and Isaac made garlic shrimp skewers, and I made garlic cheese bread. Isaac also made mudslides and appletinis for everyone to sample. We had a bit of bubbly with dinner and some blackberry wine that was really good. Cards from the fam. Mmmm, dinner was so good. Jaime and I made chocolate orange cheesecake for dessert.

After all the delicious food, we played charades and watched an episode of Petticoat Junction, an old black and white TV show. It was a great party, it felt very celebratory.

Graduation

I graduated from Fresno State with my BS in public health, as a community health option. Friday there was a public health department luncheon that Mom, Jaime, and I went to. Each of us was called up by our advisers and they said a little about us; I found out I was valedictorian for my department! Me and Dr. D, he was my teacher for the senior project class. Here are the community health option graduates. Me and Kara, she was my advisor and my favorite teacher. The luncheon was nice, it was smaller and there were a lot of people I recognized. Notice though that my tassel is still on the right, I was not an official graduate yet. I had to work Friday night, so that's where I headed after the luncheon. When I got home, I found this sign in my room! Heather had put it up when they were there for dinner. Saturday morning was the commencement ceremony, Heather took a picture of my name in the program. There were a lot of people, we had almost 5,000 graduates, although not everyone participated in the ceremony. Still, it was too many people to call everyone by name, so we just stood up as colleges. There was a surprise though because they called the names of the people who graduated with a 4.0 and had us stand up, that was exciting. Finally finding my family after the ceremony. My family was there: Dad, Heather, me, Mom, Grandpa, Michelle, and Jonah. Notice my tassel is on the left now :) Heather says this is a picture of me walking into my bright future, In'N'Out for lunch! We got stuck in the parking lot forever and took some pictures because we were bored. Finally, we made it to In'N'Out and had a delicious lunch before heading home to quickly clean the house for the church picnic.