Huntington Lake 2013

Last weekend we did a quick trip to Huntington Lake in the Sierras with Paul's parents and his brother Bobby and his family.  Huntington Lake is a little lake that is off the beaten path and not a place that many people go to.  We went there almost exactly two years ago when Clara was only about five weeks old.  We had a much smaller group this time, but we still had fun. 

 

We got in a little bit of tennis...

 

 

And on Saturday morning we did a nice little hike along a small river slash big stream.  There were absolutely loads of wildflowers everywhere and Paul kept picking them for Clara.

Paul's dad, Bob, wore a swimming suit just so he could jump into any deep pools we found.  We all stood off to the side, dry and warm, and egged cheered him on.

The water must have been frigid but Grandpa said it was refreshing.

Bobby, Paul's older brother, just earned his PhD in archaeology from U.C. Davis and was out here with his family for graduation.  They recently moved from St. George to Alpine to be closer to Paul's parents. 

I had to share this picture of wildflowers growing out of the rocks.  I have never seen so many flowers blooming everywhere I looked.

Easily the highlight of the trip for Clara was the moment that Grandpa dove into a deep pool.  She thought it was hilarious and totally awesome and has repeated over and over and over "Dive! Bamp-pa! Dive!" since then.  She makes up diving games on the bed or on the couch or even just on the living room flower and tells me "dive like bamp-pa!".  And we have been swimming at the pool a lot this week too and she likes to jump off the edge of the pool to me while shouting "Clara dive!!"  Incidentally, Paul's dad has pretty good form, don't you think? 

Paul carried Clara in the carrier for the first half of the hike, but when we were ready to turn around and head back down, we let her get out and finish the hike mostly on her own.  She was really pretty good about keeping up and holding hands over the more difficult portions and I only had to carry her in my arms a few times.  We're hoping she will become a good little hiker and enjoy it as much as we do.

We spent a lot of time at the pool, too, which was so much fun.  We bought a little inflatable car for Clara to sit in but mostly she liked jumping in to be caught by one of us or having daddy toss her high out of the water and catching her.  She is still a petite little thing, but she weighs a good 26 pounds and this has gotten to be a bit of a workout for mommy.

Little Robert (our nephew) and Clara got horsey rides around the pool from Grandpa and Grandma.

In the late afternoon on Saturday I made chimichangas for dinner while Paul built towers for Clara with some blocks that they found at the condo, then Clara would knock them down.

I also figured that since we had at least some of Paul's family there with us we might as well celebrate Paul's birthday even though it was a week early, so I made him a marble cake with fudge frosting and we scrounged up THIRTY-TWO candles for him to blow out.  Clara made sure to get in our the candle blowing action and was positively giddy about the whole thing.  She clearly remembered doing this just a month ago for her own birthday and thought it was great fun that now it was daddy's birthday.  All week we've been practicing saying "happy birthday daddy!" and she has it down perfectly now.  I'll try to get a video of it.

Paul's family left the next morning at 4:00 a.m. I woke up as they were leaving but we waited until a decent hour to pack up and head out.  Although I didn't sleep much because I got a text from my sister-in-law, Deborah (Paul's brother Dave's wife) at 4:19 that she was at the hospital having their baby (little Graham is such a cutie and we are excited to have a new nephew).  Paul's family had a 16 hour drive to get home (crazy, right?!) and ours was only about 5.  It was a quick get-away since we only got there Friday morning around 11:00 and left Sunday morning around 7:30 but we had fun visiting with family, eating good food, and trying to pack a lot in.