Yoooooosemite!

What a trip! I don't know how many of you have ever been able to enjoy the beauty of Yosemite. I feel like our trip could have been entitled, "How To See Yosemite Without Ever Leaving Your Car."

The reason for our fast, but scenic trip was a wedding. Kai's brother Ben, number five in the line up of ten brothers, married a sweet girl named Amanda Baeza. They had first decided to marry in Italy and then later changed the location to Yosemite.

We left Mesquite for the Vegas airport Friday afternoon. An hour after our plane took flight, we landed in Fresno, California. From there we drove our rental car for 45 minutes to and hour to a little, and I mean little town called Oakhurst. It was quaint and really played up the bear motif. Every where we looked we saw a bear carved out an old tree stump. The first hotel we stayed in was a Best Western and it was really cute. It really prepared you for the Yosemite atmosphere. Our cabin looking rooms were pushed back into a small forest-like-area.

This picture, as were many others, was taken of our hotel as we passed it in the car. Our rooms were behind it, to the left, in the trees.

This is late at night in our hotel bathroom. Kiera was not sleepy and really wanted me to be a "walrus" with her. She chose the little coffee stick stirrers that she wanted me to have, and then of course she wanted a picture. I think out of the hundreds of pictures I took of Yosemite, this is one of 4 that I am in.

This is a 2,000 year old sequoia tree, or as Kiera would say, "kakoiya". Its pretty huge.
This is one of the many carved bear statues marking the entrance to the hotels diner. Kiera was really getting into being a bear. She had to get on all fours and growl.

This is inside the diner. When you have a large family like we do its hard on the waitresses. I think they were very overwhelmed. They had a hard time getting our orders right. I don't have a picture of the whole group, but 9 of the 10 brothers are in attendance, plus wives/girlfriends, plus 5 children, 2 grandparents, one aunt and one cousin and one family friend.
Ian and Victoria's Kids, Malia and Trey, and my kids, of course.
This is right outside the little Yosemite church that Ben and Amanda got married in. There was a wedding going on when we got there and we had about 40 minutes to kill before we got ready, so we decided to go on an adventure. Which really means we climbed on a lot of rocks in the Forest. Here are a few pictures of the kids actually holding still.

This is the little church. It was like being in a sauna. It was so hot we were literally dripping sweat. On my bathroom trip with Kiera I was kind of surprised to discover that the bathroom was air conditioned. I wonder why the rest of the church wasn't.
Cambria has been a flower girl one other time. She loved it. This time however she was feeling a little pressure because someone told her that she was in charge of getting all the little girls together and leading them down the aisle. Well, this proved to be too much pressure for her. She told me, " Mom, what if I can't get them to stand in the right place. I just don't think I can do it." I of course gave her words of encouragement and told her that a big person would help her and all the really had to do was walk up to the front and then stand by me. If you can see the look on her face in this picture, you can tell that it didn't really make her feel much more confident.

The Happy couple, Ben and Amanda. If we were sweating up a storm I can't imagine how Ben felt since he was wearing a suit.


The first picture is taken of Bridal Veil falls from my car. We actually did get out of the car for about 20 minutes to hike to the viewpoint. It really was quite pretty.

From the top left, Cousin Robby, Mike, baby Kiana (mike's 18 month old) Ke'ala (holding Kiana), Sonny (cupping his ear) Ian flexing, Malia below Ian, Little Trey, bottom row, Candy (Keala's wife, Cathy, Joy (Joey's wife), Me and Cambria. Kiera and Malachi were sleeping in the car. Kai stayed behind, but He and Kiera ran up to see the waterfall before we left. Cambria on another adventure. She would climb around those rocks all day if I let her.

This was a scenic view of Half dome. Unfortunately Malia's head is right in the way of the view.
Can you tell how big the base of that tree is?!! It is massive. I was very impressed but apparently there is a tour that takes you farther into the Forest to see even bigger trees. To think of a tree that has been around for 2000 years is kind of magical. They have been around for so much history. If they could talk, imagine the stories they could tell.

This of course is Kai, the kids and his Mom and Dad. The kids were tired of smiling so I told them I would get them a big old ice cream if they would smile really big for a few more pictures. Kiera really wanted an ice cream.

Even though the majority of the trip was spent in the car we really did have a fun time. Monday morning both Cambria and Kiera kept saying, "I miss Yosemite." It really did seem like a place we would like to go back to. There was white water rafting and hiking and bike tours and lakes. Maybe in a few years we'll go again, but we make sure to be outside a little more and in the car a lot less.