yosemite

vacay part two. one of our faves... yosemite. we went up for a quick trip with the some of our best family friends, the saunder's families. kirby and josh, casey's hubby, were super macho and climbed half-dome in record time (we are totally convinced). we even got to talk to them when they got to the top because they had cell reception. i was super happy kirby didn't die and used him as a hot, trophy husband the rest of the day because i thought he was so awesome for being such a mountain man.

we let hero run free and free she ran. dirt, dirt, chase squirrels, scream at squirrels, chase deer, dirt, dirt, eat dirt, get soaking wet, dirt, dirt, dirt. she is so not that girl that doesn't like to get messy. she is also turning out to be pretty fearless... if she saw some kids jumping off of boulders, up a boulder she would climb to throw herself from the top. while it means we have to keep her wrangled a lot of the time, it also means we get the joy of watching her explore her world and discover new, fun things...and that is the best.

mary is totally my sensitive, mommy's girl, so she pretty much hung with me the whole time while we watched her sis stomp around like a big girl. she is getting to be so super cute i don't even know what to do with myself. we all had fun piling into a hotel room (the girls and babies got to go non-camping... and by piling i mean, me, hero, mary, my mom, casey, casey's mom, casey's munchkins, caleb and joelle, and lindy) and hanging out for the week in one of the greatest places ever. here's some fun pictures of our trip.

the summit.

the crazy, horrible cables. 800 ft of cables.

as if hiking 18 miles or whatever to the top of the rock wasn't enough. these guys were strapping up a tightrope. insanity.

kirby's view. yikes!

my hikin' boy.

dirt.

hero and caleb being so cute.

river baby.

mary found her feet. hooray! here she is, showing you.

pb&j's in her camping chair. life is pretty good here.

looking at deer with grandma.

lindy and the two babes, getting their tans on.

the new fave, the two finger suck! i love this one.

big time camper-girl. roughin' in.

pismo

some of our summer vaca-bliss was an awesome trip to pismo with kirby's side-o-the family. kirby's mom treated us and kirby's brother and his wife to a long weekend at a beach house. it was pretty great. we discovered that there is no stopping hero's ability to get completely filthy. we also discovered it is pretty difficult to sleep all of us in a king sized bed... this makes for aggravating middle of the night moments, but really funny following morning moments.

here is an example.
one night after a good hour and a half of hero crying because i was feeding mary but she wanted to snuggle me, i finally settled down with her to cuddle and as i was scratching her back, i reached me hand into the top of diaper to scratch her lower back and put my finger in a poo. a moment like this provides lots of good reasons to freak out... 1) it was 4:30 in the morning and 2) i just put my hand in poop...in a pitch black room, in a bed full of people, at 4:30 in the morning 3) my daughter hasn't pooped in the middle of the night since she was a month old. whats wrong with her!? i get out of bed to wash off, kirby flips on the lights to change her. hero laughs. mary wakes up. mary cries. we all cry... almost.

pretty funny the next morning, not really funny then. well, kinda funny then.

anyway, we had such a great time with each other. lots of new memories were made and lots of good stuff happened.

and lots of sweet stuff happened... like this "i'm going to show you the world, my little one" moment.

mary has started the finger-suck. pretty cutie if you ask her momma.

hero kept stretching out over the expanse of her sand holes. as if to say, "this here is my sand hole, no on else is allowed inside."

of course, brilliant mom didn't think that central coast beaches get cold. this was the best we could do one evening. she thought it was pretty awesome, though.

sandy baby.

she sat perched in a sand hole most of the time. good vantage point, i guess.

wet jeans + sand hole= most sandy butt ever.

sweet baby girl with g-ma fike.

at avila beach for the farmers market...

this is kirby's cracking up face. i love when this happens. i just had to put it up cause i think its so cute.

melt.

wow

its pretty embarrassing how long its been since i posted. get ready for the major heat wave of updates.

we've missed you, blogosphere.