Dude Mountain 5.30.15

We hiked up Dude Mountain as a family.  Josh was in the pack and the rest of us on our own two feet.  Jeralyn was pretty tired going down, but she did great!

Taking a break about halfway up.

Jeralyn had no idea I was posing like a ballerina.  It was fun!

This ridge is so beautiful because it has all of these different wildflowers all over it.

Jeralyn in the snow.

Yeah, it's pretty up here!

The last part of the climb up.

Eating lunch at the top.  Pretty amazing!  Anyone want to come visit us?

Jeralyn sitting among the beautiful lupine.  She knows these are my favorite.

And then we headed down.  A great day for a hike!

2nd Haircut & Silly Sister 5.28.15

Quent gave Josh his first and second haircut.  Here he is for his second cut.  He was wiggly, but not too bad.  He was given lots of things to keep him occupied.

And his funny sister asked me to take some pictures of her, too.

Cuteness Overload 5.26.15

So we attempted a photo shoot session with the kids.  And this is quite embarrassing, *cough*, but these were also done with the intention of them being for Josh's first birthday, which was in March.  *blush*  What can I say, we are quite busy!  And I can't even use the weather as an excuse because the month of May was AMAZING here while the rest of the country was drowning in wetness.  Seriously though, in a whole month we had only ONE cloudy day and a 2 hour thunderstorm.  Now, both of those things are HIGHLY unusual here (remember, we get 14 FEET of precipitation a year!).  And a thunderstorm...so very rare!  So what a great month!

Anyway, I'm getting off track here.

Joshua is 14 months during this photo shoot.  He started walking at 13 months.  So imagine how "fun" this photo shoot was.  I think we wished we could clone ourselves and grow an extra arm each just to keep Josh sitting still. Getting a photo of the two of them together was CRAZY!  So we did our best.  (Some of these photos have been printed for family--keep an eye on your mailbox).

He actually sat still for a few seconds for both of the last two photos, but then he was DONE with that.

I'm trying to rearrange them here.  Probably had to tackle Josh to the ground a few times.

"Ahhh, she's touching me!"

This one isn't too bad.

Love this picture!

And this one!

"Let's try taking a picture of them together when Josh is in the car."  Haha...oh man!

Down he goes.  Poor little guy!

Running and dancing.

Then we took them over to our neighbor's trampoline with hopes of getting more photos, which we did...

We did our best.  Right?  :)

S'mores 5.25.15

On Memorial Day we had some friends over for a BBQ.  And then afterwards we made s'mores in our fire pit in our yard.  All of the kids loved it (and the adults too).

Her little "I love s'mores" dance.  Not really, but she likes to pose for the camera like this these days.

Josh being cute!

Mmmm...

Deer Mountain with Jeralyn May 24-25, 2015

During our month of AWESOME weather, Quent took Jeralyn hiking up Deer Mountain for an overnight stay at the cabin.  She was super excited since she LOVES camping (she didn't stop talking about it since our trial camping night). 

So they packed up and headed up the mountain.

I believe this was taken at the beginning of the trail.

So proud of our girl who walked all the way up (and down the next day)!

Silly girl!

Stopping to take a break.

Water break.

Jeralyn is really into posing like a ballerina for the camera these days.  So cute!

Walking in the snow.

They made it to the cabin after about 4 hours (Quent does the hike up in 1 hour).  Quent made some dinner for the two of them.

They had the cabin to themselves.

Quent said that Jeralyn was not impressed with the pit toilet (nor is she in favor of the outhouses). There's a funny story.

(as told by Quent)  As Jeralyn settled down in the cabin for the night, I told her that I was going to brush my teeth and go to the bathroom.  What I left unsaid was that I was planning on being away from the cabin for a little while so she could fall asleep.  Based on past camping experiences, I've observed that it takes her a very long time to fall asleep if I lay next to her.  So I existed the cabin, brushed my teeth, and visited the outhouse before climbing some rock outcrops around the cabin.  After about an hour I decided to come back and check on her.  She was wide awake, and was playing with Shelly and her doll.  Eventually she spotted me so I entered the cabin and she promptly asked, "Daddy, did you fall in the bathroom."  After explain that no, I had avoided that misfortune.  She then asked, "Did you go whoa, Whoa, WHOA!  Which is her way of asking if I almost fell in!

There is a prelude to that story.  When she visited the outhouse she looked down in the pit she thought it was really deep and was afraid that she might fall in... so much so that she had to visit the blueberry bushes instead.  Her concern for my welfare was as memorable as it was sweet.  

All packed up and ready to go down.   

Can't quite see it in this single photo but she was jumping up and down, doing one of her ballet moves.   

Crowberry flowers.  

First overlook.  As we hiked down from this point Jeralyn's legs started to tire and our pace of progress grew slower and slower.  It took about as much time to go down as it did to go up.  Nevertheless, pretty impressive for a three year old (or at least that what the folks on the trail seemed to think).