Disneyland for the day

Quick trip down to Disneyland for the kids. I was working so Pam and the kids were accompanied by my mom and Kellyn with Drew Larson. They reported having a great time at the Happiest Place on Earth. It was a long day, though, as they were walking around the park until late into the evening.

Rock Walls

With the house down and junipers out, we're delighted with our new rock walls. We decided to go with a lighter stone which has turned out very nicely. It looks like it was just hewn out of the quarry and dropped off in our front yard.

As a side note, Orinda just isn't the same town as I grew up in. A new group of teens has surfaced and I've recently dubbed them the PP gang. I haven't decided if I like the "Porta-Potty" or "Potty-Pushing" name better, though. For three weekends in a row, our porta-potty was tipped over by this nefarious group. We seem to have outsmarted them for the moment, however, with a few stakes holding it down.

Yosemite Get Away

To celebrate our 12th anniversary, Pam and I decided to hike Half Dome. We'd heard of a few other people doing it and we definitely thought it sounded like fun. Back at BYU, we'd climbed Mt. Timpanogos twice - summitting once - and enjoyed the climb-a-mountain-at-night adventure.

We left home Friday afternoon on our way to Yosemite and stopped in Modesto for some dinner. Driving a bit blind, we wandered around Modesto until until getting the bright idea of calling our friends who'd recently moved from there. We got some nice restaurant ideas and had some of our best nachos ever before driving the rest of the was to Fish Camp. I had only started looking for hotels about 2 days before and everything in Yosemite valley was booked so we ended up at the Tanaya Lodge.

We had planned to get up at about 4am but after getting upgraded to a suite when we arrived (they were about full as well) we felt like we needed to enjoy our room and "sleep in" until about 5. Pam and I reached the trail head parking lot about 6:30 and took a quick picture at the base of the Merced (I think) river before heading up.

We took about 3 1/2 hours up and another 3 1/2 hours back down and got a few fun pictures on the way. The final climb up to the summit is assisted by some cables placed in the mountain side. It's quite steep and my favorite part was coming back down the cables. There were a few others on their way up so I had to stop a few times but otherwise I ran down the whole section. Fun, fun.

Here we are a the two falls we hiked past. Vernal falls is the picture above and the "Mist" trail passes close enough to get sprayed like a light rain. On the right is the higher up Nevada falls.

Deconstruction

Just after Memorial day we started our ambitious home addition and remodel. I'll leave the talking to the pictures. Estimated time frame is 10-12 months.

Before, with the Junipers that Pam "loves" so much.

Getting started building a road on the side of the house.

Bye bye Junipers

Deconstruction fully underway