Aiden Turns 5

So,
     Aiden turned 5 yesterday. He is smart, sensitive, kind and 5 with all the rest that that entails. He is having a great year so far in Pre- kindergarten and loves going to school. He made out like and absolute bandit on his birthday and loves to play with all of his new toys.

In the morning he woke up and opened these presents.

5 YEARS OLD!!!

Obi-Wan Lightsaber!

Optimus Prime!

Halloween Pillowcase!

Switch n' GO dino!

Zoey used her school "bucks" to get him a green frog zipper animal for his backpack.

To celebrate his birthday he played with his toys. We also went to Chuck E Cheese for games at his request.  Then we went to Toys R Us and let him pick out a toy. He picked out a car that drives on the walls.



In the afternoon we played in the kiddy pool and went to get batteries for his light saber. We cooked his favorite meal for dinner, home made burritos. After dinner we ate cake and he opened a few more presents.

Family Tradition.

Oreo Ice cream Cake!!!

Lego Pirates!

Another dino (he loves these things and wants them all)

In the last week we also managed to finally get ourselves another shelter dog. We named her Whitney. She is at least part Collie, 4-ish months old and cute. Raising a puppy is a lot of work but hopefully she'll be worth it. The kids love her already, our carpet does not.

1st night home. She'd been spayed that day so she was exhausted.

Now she's much more active so she wears the cone of shame to keep from licking her surgery wound.

Other than that Teresas class size is down to 26. Zoey is doing well in school and is almost up to the 2nd grade reading list. I'm plugging along at work and itching to get back out on the trails but I suppose not until Whitney is up for it...



Till next time-

RTSZA and W.

MORE HIKING!!!!

So,
     Remember how I said that this blog would return to its normal form about our family occurrences and such? Those guys are boring...

I went for a hike up White Mountain on Saturday of last week. It is the 3rd tallest peak in California at 14, 242ft. We camped in the Ancient Bristlecone pine forest on Friday night and took a 4 mile hike to see the trees.

The loop was neat. I'm not sure I spotted the official oldest living non-clonal organism on the planet, the Methuselah tree. They don't point it out since they don't want it harmed or vandalized but the trees are incredible and the scenery is sparse, harsh and amazing.
    After a loud night in a party campground we woke up at 5:30 am, had breakfast, broke down camp and drove 16 miles on some pretty bad dirt roads in my Hyundai Accent 4cl 2 wheel drive. It was pretty slow going and kind of sketchy but we made it to the trailhead. We were the only non 4 wheel drive car there and it made us the butt of some jokes/ conversations about how we'd managed to pull that off.

The trail is actually a bad dirt/ rock road the whole way. The University of California has a research station 2 miles in and another one at the top. It is 15.5 miles long though and still you huff and puff over 12k ft.

I opted to take my big puffy coat up the mountain instead of my big camera so all of these shots are from Dylans (bearded dude) phone. Matt wasn't able to make it to the summit. Dylan managed but felt like he was going to die. He had never been above 13k ft before.

At the summit we were greeted by 30 UC Davis Graduate students who were "working" at the research station

The summit hut/ research station

Yours truly.

At the summit overlooking the Owens Valley 11k ft below

2 stamps one says 14,224 the other says 14,242

It started to snow/ sleet/ grapple on us on our way down.

White MT on the left.

It was a good trip. We made it home late Saturday night.


As for the rest of the family, the kids are doing well in school. Zoey is getting her talkative-ness under control and learning really quickly. Aiden is settled right in loves his classmates and teacher and looks forward to going to school every day. Teresa has 36 kindergarteners. The numbers are not in her favor. Hopefully they will add another class so she can get rid of 8-9 of those students. Aidens birthday is coming up so I'm sure there will be an actual blog update from that.

Till then-

RTSZA