4th of July on the 3rd

Since Natalie, Brian & Kyrie flew home on the 4th, we celebrated 4th of July with lots of my family on the 3rd We had so much fun together.

Swimming at Grammy & Grandpa Stone's house

Relaxing in the sunshine

Yummy BBQ'd chicken

Below are some shots of an original game called, "Smack Back" cleverly named by Uncle Brian.

The way you play is someone throws the ball out into the pool, and somebody else jumps in from the side and smacks the ball back to the thrower. Quite fun.

Emma--she looks like she's running on the water.

Dallin

Nathan

Brandon

Arthur

Hayden snuggling with Daddy

Mom and Dad make the most amazing homemade chocolate ice cream. SOOO yummy!

Dallin enjoying his ice cream

Brandon helping the littlest batter, Carter

Dad being the pinata controller

Daphne has a pretty good swing.

These cousins were just plain tuckered out from so much fun.

Fun with sparklers!

Happy 4th of July! We loved being with you all, and our kids had so much fun playing with all of their cousins!

Stone Cousins

These cousins had a fun time playing on Nona & Papa's trampoline.

These little girls posed this way of their own accord. uh-oh, can you say attitude?

Hayden

Jemma

Kyrie, Sean, Daphne, Dallin, & Jemma

Half Dome

Even though I grew up in California's Central Valley, just a couple of hours from Yosemite National Park, I had never climbed Half Dome, until this summer. At my sister, Emma's request, (It's all Emma's fault!), Dad organized a backpacking trip that Arthur and I were lucky enough to go on, thanks to Mom watching our kids.

We spent three days backpacking in Yosemite culminating with our climbing half dome on day three. It was AMAZING, and I have a new respect for myself. We're pretty much awesome, I think.

***Prepare yourself for A LOT of pictures.

I'm bad at narrowing down my selections.

I should just take less pictures, I guess.

Me and Emma being dorks. We were excited for our trip, okay?

Now, how exactly is all this stuff going to fit into that pack?

Emma, Sharee, and Natalie being . . . what else? AWESOME!

We haven't actually started hiking, but I was pretty happy with myself for getting that enormous pack onto my back.

Arthur also being . . . awesome?

Here we all are at the start of our hike.

Natalie, Dad, Jacob, Emma, me and Arthur

Crossing a freezing river

And up we go

We're all smiling because we got to the end of a pretty intense climb on the first day. Just a little bit of downhill to find a campsite for the night.

Here is our campsite. We had a big spot of snow behind our tents and also a friendly marmot who little cave in the rocks by our site.

We camped by this lake. Ahhh, so pretty. The only bummer was the mosquitos. I have never been attacked by so many mosquitos in my life. They were intolerable!

Here we are swatting at the mosquitos

Here is poor Natalie whose blood was most appealing to the little devils. I think she got 20-30 bites on her forehead alone!

Cute Emma

Arthur soaking his injured ankle and sporting a very fashionable mosquito net.

There was a controlled burn going on in another part of the park, so that's smoke you see there in this shot.

We had some unexpected rain on this trip.

Good thing we brought our very attractive ponchos, just in case. After awhile in the rain, we felt pretty miserable, so when that sun came out, we stopped for lunch and dried out and it felt glorious to be warm and dry!

Jacob and I exhibiting some mutant pine cones that we found around our campsite.

Half Dome anybody?

There are three "humps" to climbing Half Dome. This is "hump #2" which is a very steep switch-back stair trail.

Shade is a premium once you get onto "hump #2" so anytime there was a tree, we stopped for a bit to catch our breath and enjoy the shade.

Yipeee! Natalie & I on the top of Hump 2.

Next is the crazy hump #3, so steep you pull yourself up using cables. Me and Jacob are modeling our climbing gloves, (found in the garden section of Walmart) before our ascent. If you wait too long at the bottom, looking up at the specks of people climbing up, you might lose your nerve, (I almost did) so the best thing to do, is just start climbing.

I am bordering on insanity taking this picture. I am holding on to the cables (for dear life) with one hand, and taking the picture with the other. Risky business--I don't think I'd recommend it.

Here is Arthur coming up over the top!

Those small people are Dad, me, Natalie, Emma & Jacob. For cooler pictures, you should check out Natalie's blog--I never got the "cool" pictures from the other cameras.

On top of Half Dome, Arthur and I are relaxing and enjoying the views.

On the way down from Half Dome, I kept looking back feeling so proud of myself. I don't know how many times I said, "I can't believe I climbed that. Look at that thing!"

I've decided it feels really good to do something hard.

A view of Nevada falls on our way back down to the valley.

Look at this picture--it looks professional, right? I took it! It was me! It was me!

And Arthur took this beauty.

There was never a sweeter sight than the car waiting for us at the end of our hike. I was so happy and sore and tired and smelly! I couldn't wait to go home and take a SHOWER!