Snow!

 February 2023

We got to have and adventure in February! With the kids' break, we spent a few days exploring Yosemite (finally!!). We've lived in California for over 8 years and have had Yosemite on our 'to visit' list the whole time. We also had a fun night at a school fundraiser, Matthew's baptism, lots of games, and Andrew and I saw SIX: The Musical in San Francisco.

I was very impressed watching Andrew carry Alex and ride a bike like this

This picture Michael brought home from school totally cracked me up

Matthew suddenly decided he wanted to be baptized and, specifically, to be baptized in February. It was very short notice, and squeezed in right before our trip to Yosemite, but we were able to have it when he wanted and my mom and Andrew's parents were even able to make the last minute trip to come out for it. I think he felt loved and supported, and I'm very grateful for that. I personally loved that he decided to go the same route as Adaline and skip all the talks. 

Our trip to Yosemite was lovely and happened to be perfectly timed! Just a couple days before we went, there was a rock slide that closed a road and a portion of the park. On the day we left, it was the beginning of many, many feet of snow. If we hadn't snuck in our trip right when we did, we either would have been stuck there or had to completely cancel. Yosemite is gorgeous! We only saw a tiny portion of the park, but were amazed by the views. I think the most fun we had was climbing on the rocks along the Merced river the morning after we arrived. Our kids do best in unstructured exploration and they enjoyed hoping along, pointing out cool things they saw, and trying to climb bigger and bigger boulders. El Capitan was truly impressive and was made even more so by the fact that I had recently, randomly listened to an interview with Alex Honnold who is the first person to free solo El Capitan. Staring up at such a sheer and monstrous cliff, I could not even imagine taking on a task like that.

 

The other main thing we did on our first full day was hiking up to the lower part of a water fall. (Yosemite Falls, maybe?) It was just a small hike, but cool to see how loud and powerful a waterfall that doesn't even look that big really is. 

Towards the end of the day, we went to the visitor center. We intended to go here the first night, but instead we spent about 2 hours sitting in traffic to travel a half mile, loop around in a circle and just drive to our rental house instead. A combination of the recent rock slide and people trying to get a glimpse of  'Fire Falls' made it impossible for us to get through to the visitor center before it closed. So now that we could go, we looked around in the exhibit hall learning about the plants, animals, geology, and history of Yosemite. We also watched the Spirit of Yosemite film (Andrew and I both fell asleep, but the kids seemed to like it) and walked around the gift shops. Somehow when we got back to our rental, the kids had enough energy to try on and experiment with the snowshoes we had rented in preparation for the next day's adventure. 

He's never met a stuffed animal that he doesn't want to take home.

We woke up the next day to lots of snow! Which was perfect because the planned activities for this day were snowshoeing and sledding. Snowshoeing was a first for all of us, and the kids slightly hated it. It was pretty hilarious trying to get everyone's gear on and keep track of it all with all the snow coming down and all body temperature roller coasters that happens when you're doing something active outside in the winter. Andrew and I took turns carrying Alex on our shoulders, and we had to bribe the kids with hot chocolate, but we managed a small out and back. I think the kids would have done a lot better if they could have been in charge of the route and explored a little more freely. They really just wanted to trek straight up the snowbanks and wander through the untouched powder rather than stay on the path. I can't say I blame them. 

After warming up and eating lunch in the ski lodge, we found a sweet place to go sledding. Suddenly the kids weren't cold at all and most of them could have played there the entire day even though they were face planting in the snow and getting snow in their gloves. It was a fun place and we had a blast as the snow just kept coming down. 

After those adventures, we spent the rest of the day playing games, eating dinner, and drying out our gear. 

The snow really came down during the night, and the forecast was predicting 7 feet in the next 48 hours for where we were staying. On the way out, we stopped a couple times to appreciate the beautiful snowfall and get icicles off rocks. We also passed through areas that were actually being monitored for chain requirements (I feel like I never see someone monitoring these) which said something about how quickly/how much snow was accumulating. 

The day after we got back, Andrew and I had a super fun date in SF. We got dinner at a Filipino restaurant and then walked over to the Orpheum to watch SIX. It was so good! It was such a fun, upbeat musical but with plenty of interesting historical information and themes of women empowerment. Seriously, such a fun show! Andrew didn't think he would like it that much based on the music he'd heard from it/the info I gave him about it, but he loved it. It was a super fun night.