Life is a Pitch: July 2011

the beach

The last day in Yosemite we found a lake and went to the beach. The kids all had fun playing in the water. They all got along wonderfully. The adults sat on the shore commenting on how it was amazing that they could throw so much mud/sand at each other and not get hit in the FACE.....

The kids actually found a fun squirt gun...at the bottom of the lake...they used it to squirt water (and mud) at each other.

THEN....the inevitable happened. William said that I have changed my parenting style. He said that if he and Melanee had thrown mud/sand at each other or anyone else at ANY time they would have been in BIG trouble and I would have put a stop to that fun INSTANTLY. Well, with Bradley and Andrew and Mark/Paige's kids.....we just let them play....for hours.....we even laughed and took pictures of their fun activity. UNTILLLLLLLLLLLLLL........you probably guessed it.....Andrew got hit SMACK in the FACE from CLOSE range with a huge handful of the mud/sand stuff. He was instantly in serious pain. You know the cry....it's different. It's NOT fake. I kept yelling to him to put his face in the water. He wouldn't. Scott yelled to him to put his face into the water. Bradley splashed at him. It was a few minutes of chaos. But that's when William got the idea....go get the squirt water bottle. I got it and waded out to Andrew, who by now was RUBBING his eye. I squirted him in the eye ball A LOT, but there was still TONS of sand in it. We brought him over to the chair, the whole time he was yelling, "I cant see! Take me to the hospital! I hate vacation. I want to go home. Why do I always get hurt on vacation. I didn't even want to come to stupid Yosemite!" He calmed down a bit in the chair, but still insisted that he was BLIND. We could lean his head back, lift up the eye lid and squirt the water and get out CHUNKS of dirt/sand. You would NOT believe all the sand that was in there!!!!!! So it looked like most of the huge amounts were out, but this sand had iron pyryte in it....that's the little flecks of stuff that is kind of shark and hard to scrape off. It took Scott's fingernails and paper towels and holding Andrew down to get them off the inside of the eyelid. Then in our first aid kit I had ONE application of medicated eye drops. We dropped those into both eyes then PATCHED his eye.

Everyone was ready to go home.....but I did NOT want such a fun vacation to end on such a sour note....so I said LET'S GO TO PIZZA. Then Andrew said, "You never get the kind I like!" By saying we would get a Cheese Pizza (yuck) I think that calmed Andrew down (finally). We had already had lunch and it wasn't dinner time....but going out to pizza, air conditioned and together for a final time....was a good idea.

We got gas after pizza and Andrew was well enough to wash the windshield. He had already taken off the eye patch because it was making his skin itch....when we took it off his skin was already red and bumpy....I think he was allergic to the tape we used.....it was also VERY sticky tape which did a good job of hurting his skin and all the hairs under it when he took it off.

I took a picture of the water bottle because I really believe that EVERYONE should have one of these in their car, their medicine cabinet.....somewhere, everywhere....because without it I don't know how we would have gotten ALL THAT DIRT/SAND out of Andrew's eye. I don't even buy this kind of water, but I will now. They are the BEST. Thanks Mark and Paige for bringing this kind of waterbottle.

fishing

There was a creek right outside of our cabin. The kids could fish from our front doorstep. I even think CARTER caught a fish it was so easy to do....but Scott didn't! haha!!!!!

Scott undid a lot of snags!

Here is Uncle Mark with Noah's fish.

Noah ran inside the second he caught the fish.

Here is the beautiful creek!!!

more random

I can blog or I can pack for camp.....I think I will blog.

Andrew and the United States' 5th biggest waterfally, according to my niece Kiersten!

William was also standing in front of the waterfall, but since he wanted a photo that showed his shoes, the waterfall got cut out of the picture!

Half Dome.

The waterfall from the hike to the base of the waterfall.

A better view of the waterfall AND all the bazillions of smelly tourists from all over the globe!

Whenever Andrew saw a rock he would climb it...well actually that is an exaggeration, since there are so many rocks in Yosemite, but you get the idea!

Down in the water under a bridge, Scott saw a penny, so he sent Andrew down to get it. Andrew didn't put his shoes back on the rest of the hike.

Mark usually had to hike with Noah, 5 (or 4, I'm not sure) or Carter (I think he's 2), so Mark was always WAY behind the group...so here we are WAITING for Mark to catch up.

Andrew found another rock to climb...this time he used it as a slide...THAT must have hurt!

There were rocks to jump off of into the water. The water was C O L D....but that didn't stop Bradley!

William brought his frisbee. The first thing he said to Noah was, "dont throw it in the water" guess where Noah threw it???

Kiersten, Bradley, and Andrew (especially Kiersten) spent a lot of time up on this rock.

We were at a place called Mirror Lake. It was located right under Half Dome. Mark's family rode their bikes there. Andrew scootered there. And we rode the bus to the base of the hill then hiked a mile to the lake. Then the kids swam and played in the sand.

This picture is funny because I was trying hard to get everyone IN the picture and looking at the camera, and then RIGHT when I was ready to take the photo Audrey stuck her face in the camera, cutting off half the people...haha!!!!