Our First Family Vacation, and all that entails...

On our way north to visit family in Reno last weekend, we visited Yosemite National Park. Above is a picture of Yosemite Falls.

Nature Called -- Woodland Diaper Change

First, the Offering to the Tree Spirits.

Next,
"Does a baby poop in the woods?"







She does if she's been chowing down...!

I love this photo of Ken and Audrey.

















Not captured in pixels:

• Ken crabbing at me b/c he wanted to pull the car over at every photo op on the road into Yosemite Valley, and I kept saying, 'Keep going, don't stop.' I was being a Badass b/c we only had a couple hours to spend in the park if we were going to possibly make it up to Reno by early-to-mid p.m. that night (which we failed to do, as it turns out). I knew Ken wanted to see Yosemite Falls, the waterfall pictured in the first photo up top, and that we'd only be able to really "do" one thing in our short interval - so, don't dawdle, sorry. Let's hoof it to those falls...

• The wicked, flattening heat. You'd think mountains, trees, waterfalls, high altitude - coolish. You'd be wrong. The whole place is granite, and sun bakes rock good.

• The bickering over whether to take the shuttle bus or to walk from the parking area to the Falls. Me, walk there? No thanks. It's hot; I don't know where I'm going; we're packing an infant; and, we have that limited timeframe. I say let's take the shuttle, then walk back after we've gotten a drive-through exposure of the route. Ken wants to enjoy Nature (dammit!) while we're there, and he's been cooped up in the car too long (unable to take the roadside photos he wants, with the exception of the one above), and he wants the exercise... We walked. I swallowed my annoyance, poorly. But, we walked. And walked. And sweated. And kept checking the baby - moving the shade to keep the sun out, walking in the shadiest parts of the path, checking her skin temperature. And, we finally reached the damned falls. :)

• The ride back on the shuttle bus that was supposed to take us to the parking area, but instead went in the opposite direction and took us into another part of the park altogether. An employee who happened to be sitting behind us helpfully informed us that the maps we were using, the ones handily provided by the gate staff upon entering the park, were "useless."
  

• The beginnings of hunger cries from Audrey.
  

• The sobbing breakdown that Lorie had after debarking that bus to get on another bus, which then didn't appear in time to appease Ken, so we bolted off in a direction that Ken was convinced was the correct one to arrive to our parking area on foot. Meanwhile, I'm holding a bottle of breast milk, the baby's crying, and I'm desperately aware of an acute lack of shade. After a sun-soaked, dusty trek across a picturesque meadow, he turned out to be mistaken. Cue the onset of sobbing crying on my part, culminating with me throwing myself down on my ass in the dirt (in some shade!), and beckoning wildly for the baby to feed her.

Suffice it to say, I did not feed the baby in the dirt and ultimately, calmed down. The baby got fed, we got on a bus (the SAME one that we had debarked 20 minutes earlier, which had now looped around to where we walked to), got back to the car, and thus ended our brief communion with Nature's Majesty in Yosemite Valley. :)

Okay, baby's crying, gotta cut this short. Had GREAT visit with cousin Chauntall and her gorgeous bundle of joy, Myla.

Every time I have occasion to leave LA, my return gets harder and harder, and this trip gave no exception. But, we now know we're not likely to pick Reno to move to. I like where Chauntall and Paul's house is, and they have a really cool view of the surrounding mountains. But, it's still a High Desert landscape, and I'm tired of Brown.

Note: My stepdad is home and recuperating as well as can be hoped from his perforated colon surgery. And, now my mom is the recuperee -- she had gallbladder surgery this morning. Report from stepdad is that everything went just ducky, and she's home now.