San Francisco Family Reunion - May 2012

We thoroughly enjoyed our first "city" family reunion in San Francisco.  Thirty-three people in 2 houses this time.  We had beautiful weather and enjoyed just being together.  My favorite activities were the day at the Golden Gate Park and the Land's end hike.

 As is the case many years, we celebrated Allie's birthday while on our vacation.  The beautiful cake was ordered by Troy and Dan and delivered to the park, surprising Allie.

Afton, knowing it was Allie's special day, gave her some special treatment.

The kids enjoyed seeing my old house on Wicklow St. and seeing my grade school and church.

Land's End Hike

 Notice a theme here?

Yosemite: May 2012

David and I realized some years ago that we love National Parks.  We love to hike and enjoy different areas of the country, so when the Barber family decided on San Francisco for the family reunion site we immediately decided we would visit a National park close by:  Yosemite. We had 2 beautiful days in the park and here are some of the highlights:

Our favorite hike:  The Mist Trail to Vernal Falls.  This hike was GORGEOUS.  The best part is when you got close to the falls and there was this pretty steep hike through the mist.

Soaked from the mist and almost to the top!

 We made it!

 At the top there is a huge area to just hang out and enjoy the view

Our other favorite hike was the easy trail to Lower Yosemite Falls.  This was a level trail with wide open spaces that led to the very uncharacteristic comment by David "boys, go blaze a trail!" After they took off in the open spaces off the paved trail, it didn't take long before we lost track of them and sent out our own search party.  It took about 5 minutes of us racing around to the top of the trail and all through out the wide open spaces before we found the boys.  We didn't let David forget his comment, that led to lost boys, for the rest of the trip.

Everyone (except Sydney) enjoyed horseback riding through Yosemite.  We were supposed to ride to Mirror Lake but because of of huge rock slide, tourists cannot currently get to the lake.  Sydney was very scared of the horses and had to turn back as soon as we started.

Sydney NOT liking her horse

The last thing we did while in Yosemite is drive south to the Mariposa Grove of Giant sequoia trees.  We were so glad we took the time to do this hike.  The triplets had never seen giant sequoias and they will never forget them.

The Bachelor and 3 Graces

The Grizzly Giant:  one of the oldest trees (2700 years old).  It has branches 7 ft. in diameter

 The California Tunnel

The telescope

 We will definitely go back!

Middle School!

I haven't blogged in months.  School started today so I'm going to start going back and filling in some summer blogs after I first post some first day of school pictures.

Middle school has brought a lot of feelings from the triplets.  Nervous, excited, dreading, anxious, mostly the unknown was killing them.  Sydney especially wants to know exactly what is going on before she does anything.  She asked everyone to tell her about middle school and listened to many words of advice from older friends.  Thankfully now a days, they have a 6th grade orientation 1/2 day where they familiarize all the newbies and help them feel a little more comfortable for the first real day of school tomorrow when all the "scary 7th and 8th graders" will be there.

Tanner, Connor and Sydney all got in the same pod,  bronze pod, but are in different home rooms.  This morning they would not walk to the bus stop because the only kids there were freshman, who also had orientation today.  I heard Tanner say to Connor "lets stick together today, okay?"  I'm so glad they have each other for new, kind of scary, situations.  Here's to a good school year!

Triathlon - buckwheat style

I don't remember how it started but I'm sure it was Lori's idea to do a sister's triathlon.  Once Lori became the runner of the family and Julie was the swimmer that left biking to me.  The first thing I would need was a bike.  This was something David and I had been wanting to purchase anyway.  We have thoroughly enjoyed finding all the greenways in Knoxville and being able to enjoy this new hobby together.  When we bought our bikes we told the store owner that I might do a triathlon and he kind of chuckled and said "well you might see another bike or two like this on the race".  Little did I know how serious he was.  My little commuter bike might as well have had a bell and basket on it compared to all the serious race bikes that day.  I lost track of how many people passed me up during the race, but the best was when a teenage boy passed me and said "you're doing great, keep it up!"  Ouch!

We had fun and felt accomplished for doing it together.  Buckwheats Rule!!

Thanks to David who woke up really early with me and supported me by taking pictures and filming some.  I love that man (:  He recently had his knee drained and got another cortisone shot so he was feeling extra agile and I could tell he kind of wished he could compete.