May

Piano recital.  Both boys did really well.  This was the end of my piano lessons and last recital here. It was in a week that my life changed and the recital that was coming the following week was the end of all lessons in this area for me.

This was another end.  My little preschool room. This chalkboard was taken off the wall and thrown away. It served us well.  I let all of the preschool kids that I had signed up know that I would be moving and wouldn't be teaching in the area. In this room I had recently painted a quote on the wall...something I had wanted to do and finally did just weeks before finding out we would be leaving and I needed to remove it.  It did not want to be removed so we ended up painting this room.

Youth Conference.  The week after the recital we had youth confrence.  I was privileged to be able to go. Roslyn was my buddy we camped out at Catalina State Park and then the next day we hiked to Romero pools.  It was a longer hike than I was thinking, I had thought of taking the boys on this hike but I am glad I never did...I don't think we would have made it.  It was perfect for Roslyn and I though and I was glad that I was able to make this hike before leaving this beautiful place.

The day following our hike was Mother's day which was perfect because I got to take a break from making meals and everything else.  The day after Mother's day I took all of the kids and we drove to L.A. It was also the day our home went on the market and I had people contacting me every couple of hours to see our home.  Our home was show about 7 times that day and we had an offer by the end of the day.

We loved being at Becca's house.  It was fun to see Roslyn and Evan interact with their cousins.  Also Becca makes such fun different foods.  It was fun to see all of the fun things she would make.

Tuesday:  The following day Uncle Austen and the kids and I started our drive up the coast of California.  Becca came with us to our first stop..I think it was Sant Barbara.  The Wolf museum.  It is a museum that our pass gets us into for free so we went and enjoyed some time together there. We especially liked this tree.  It is an amazing tree with super fun roots.  It is amazing how nature really can be the best play structures and toys. :)

We camped that night at Big Sur and then went to the Monteray Bay aquarium the next day.  It was so relaxing being by the ocean and hearing the waves.  We all loved learning about the ocean at the aquarium.  It was super nice of Austen to take us all there!

(Evan was afraid of the sharks, even with explanation he did not want to descend the steps to be near the ocean.)

The day we were at Becca's before we started our journey, Christopher had read about a big storm coming through on Wednesday night...A night we were going to be way up in the mountains away from everything so Austen was a genius and got us this yurt to stay in.  It was amazing!! It was so nice to have a nice warm bed to sleep in, especially when it was pouring rain outside. (Also they had internet access, nice to be able to communicate with people for a few hours.)

Thursday: Golden Gate bridge and museum that is by there.  My boys liked the museum but we all agreed that it would be fun to come on a day when it wasn't raining.  A number of the things were outside and we couldn't do in the rain, but we still had a good time.

Oakland Temple Open house.  It was amazing and perfect that there was this open house while we were passing through.  It was nice to be able to go to the temple with all of my kidos and Austen.  We also liked the visitor center next door where they have this amazing view over San Francisco..

The picture below is a little museum in Santa Cruz.  It was a perfect little museum to go to that had some fun things for kids to do.

That night we slept at a camp sight not far from Henry Cal State Park.  It was a bit of a rough night because we got there late and it was raining and we had planned to cook our food at the campsight.  Everything ended up working out just fine...we had a little bit of an interesting dinner but other than that it was great!

The next morning Friday we went to Henry Cal State Park.  I loved this park.  I learned so much from the park rangers and it was amazing and impressive to see all of these red woods.  We especially like the tree that has a huge, really huge cavity that we all went into.  It was also fun to see the banana slugs everywhere and to see an albino redwood tree.

We visited and walked around the beach for a little bit.  It was nice to just relax on the beach.

Friday night Michael had booked us a hotel.  So that was nice after such a crazy rainy night camping and really after many days of camping.  It was time for us to have a good shower.  We left Austen at his place to get ready for work the following Monday.  (He started a new job the Monday after our great adventure.) I cleaned out the car and we had a low key morning.  I tried to get everything ready for the rest of our journey that I would be doing without another adult. I also did some grocery shopping and then in the evening we went back to Austen's place where he made us a very nice dinner and then we all slept in his bedroom for our last night in the area.

We attended the singles ward together.  Which was actually a lot of fun.  They had this nursery room upstairs in the institute building where we went for Sunday school.  It was fun having my own private Sunday school class.  Later that day we went for a little hike before we headed out to our next camp sight.

Yosemite, Sunday night we slept in the campgrounds around Yosemite National Park. It was another rainy cold evening and we had forgotten our tent at Austen's house where we had left it to dry after our last rainy night.  Luckily we had this 3 man tent that I had brought just in case...well really I brought it because it was just with all of our camping things.  It worked perfectly because it was a very cold night and it was nice to all be snuggled up close.  We also had extra sleeping bags that Becca had sent for Austen to use.  We put our sleeping bags under us and then had them sleep in the ones from Becca.  It was good because the bottom ones were wet by the end of the night and all of those wet parts were frozen.  There was ice all along the outside and inside of the tent but we were warm.

I had somewhat debated staying the night at Yosemite because of the cold...not many people and no one in tents were there that night. But the next day I was glad that we decided not to skip out on this part of the adventure.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.  It was such a relaxing and beautiful hike well worth the cold night.

The next day was to be Sequoia National Park, we went but because of a huge snow storm they were not letting cars go up so we ended up turning around and heading on our way to Becca's house.  The night between Yosemite and Sequoia we had another hotel stay. I had wanted to wash our clothes because we were done camping and it just sounded nice.  I didn't have enough cash to use the ones at the hotel so I thought I will just wash them in the bathtub.  I now have a much greater appreciation for washing machines. I spent hours trying to get our clothes clean and they really weren't that clean after all of that work and I didn't get much sleep because of it. Anyways my lesson is learned washing machines are worth the money they cost to run. :)

At the beach by Becca's house. Becca cleaned our clothes for us and we had another nice stay with her.

Back at home again it was time to get serious about packing.  The piano was something that we decided to sale rather than move.  It worked great but now it has been passed on to bless someone else.