The Red Barn

On Saturday we went to Stanford's Red Barn to look at the horses. 

Lucas was scared. He was happy until he heard a horse neigh. I think he thought we were going to look at statues of horses, instead of the live version. He still enjoyed watching the horses from a distance, as long as Daddy was holding him.

A couple of riders lets us pet their horses. One rider even let William and Blaine feed her horse some biscuits. William dropped the biscuit on the ground and wouldn't try again because he didn't like the slimy feeling of his hand in the horse's mouth. Blaine also dropped his biscuit on the first attempt, but picked it up and tried again with a big smile on his face.

A horse and rider came out to practice jumping while we were there.

One more picture. I like when it looks like they like each other.

The Reading Book

On Thursday William finished what has become known in our family as "the reading book". Most of the credit goes to Justin who worked with him in the mornings.

 It is so fun to hear William read.  

Our apologies to Grandma Talbot, who let us borrow the book. It was in such good condition when we got it from you. Now the corners are bent and it's missing its back cover.

Yosemite 2010, Half Dome Photos

Part of the fun of Yosemite for me was taking pictures. This was really my first chance to take some nature photographs with the new camera. I'm definitely not a photographer, but it's amazing how a DSLR makes you feel like one. Here are some of my favorite pictures of Half Dome. Due to the changing weather conditions over the 3 days we were there, I got a number of different takes on the famous rock.

This is the evening of our first full day in the park. The heavy clouds of the previous evening had parted, but some clouds still remained. I don't think that this was an orographic cloud (it doesn't have the characteristic pancake shape), but it did remain over Half Dome for the twenty or so minutes that I watched while other clouds blew past.


On the morning of the second full day I walked over to Royal Arch Falls (pictures in a later post) and took this photo looking across one of the meadows. The sky was overcast again. I wish my camera had higher dynamic range. It's really hard to get the sky and the ground both in range in the mornings and evenings.


Another picture from the same walk, attempting to use a plant in the foreground for effect.


On the morning of the third day, William and I went for an early morning walk. The sky had cleared almost completely this day. I loved the mist rising up over the meadow and the ray of light cast over Half Dome's shoulder as the sun rises behind it. The small stream was an added bonus.


In the evening of the third day, a quick rain shower passed overhead while we were at a children's activity at Yosemite Lodge. While driving back to the campsite we noticed that the shower had moved over Half Dome creating a faint rainbow. I stopped the van and ran out into the middle of a meadow, sinking my shoes completely in the deep mud, to get a shot unobstructed by trees. The rainbow only lasted about 5 minutes and was never very saturated. But I loved getting this picture and the feeling of racing for the shot before the opportunity disappeared.

I added the vignetting to hide a couple of ugly RVs in the lower-left and to emphasize the arch of the rainbow, but I'm not sure I like it.

Yosemite 2010, Part II

We arrived in Yosemite in the evening, unpacked, and then had dinner before going to bed. Including our lunch at In 'n Out, we had 7 potty stops on the 4-hour trip (that's got to be some kind of record). After the boys were in bed and Amy was off washing clothes that had been thrown up on (it wouldn't be a Talbot trip without at least one car sick incident), a small bear wandered through our camp. It was about as tall as a medium-sized dog, but much rounder. I've been to Yellowstone probably a dozen times and to Yosemite 3 or 4 times, and this was the first time I'd ever seen a wild bear. It was quite a thrill. He wandered up to our food locker and gave it a sniff. I pointed my flashlight at him and banged on the table and he mozied on to the next hut. He seemed quite familiar with the drill.

The next morning we made an early start (about 10:30. hey, we have kids.) to go visit Yosemite Fall. Since I was here last, the park has started a shuttle service to reduce the amount of traffic. We waited at the bus stop for a few minutes before boarding a very crowded bus.

The buses go one-way around the valley floor and it turns out that traveling from our stop to Yosemite Fall requires going almost all the way around the valley. Due to the large number of people, it took us about half an hour to get to our stop. Later, we looked at the map and decided it would have only taken us 15 minutes to walk to the falls from our camp site.

After a few potty stops we made it to the lower falls.


Along the path there were borders made with basketball-sized boulders. Lucas insisted on stepping on every single one despite the occasional 3 foot drop off the side. On the way back we stopped to eat lunch and take another picture. (Despite the hat, we are not Dodgers fans. Go Padres!)


After we got back to our campsite, we saw a number of deer. This was a high point of the trip for the boys, who afterward repeatedly said, "I can't wait to tell my friends that I saw a real deer!"

Yosemite 2010, Part I

We got to spend last week at Yosemite. It was an entry on our list of things to do while we live in Northern California and we finally got to check it off. I had been a number of times while growing up, but this was the first time for Amy and the boys.

I ended up taking lots of pictures, so I'll divide them up across multiple entries. I'm not exactly sure how to organize them yet. I'll start off temporally, but I may switch to do some photos by geographic feature.

We drove in along the 140 which goes through the El Portal entrance. Along the way we drove along the Merced River as it exited Yosemite Valley. It was running very fast and wild in the narrow canyon fed by the spring run off.


We also drove past the Ferguson rock slide that covered the old road in 2006. I didn't get any pictures since I was driving at the time, but it's a pretty impressive sight--the old road just runs into the new side of the mountain and doesn't reappear for about 100 yards.

We hopped out to see the first water fall we passed; I didn't get the name of this one. It's before the main part of the park and I wasn't able to find a map online that showed this one. William has taken to doing random "poses" for the camera, which he hopes tells a story. In the sequence of photos this came from, he was pretending to be a monster making the sound of the waterfall.


Next we passed El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall. These photos are taken from the side of the highway. We had the good fortune of having very variable weather over the 4 days we were there, leading a variety of conditions for photographs. Here we see the low clouds and overcast sky that occurred on our first night in the valley.



We arrived at our campground in Housekeeping. Our three-walled, canvas-covered hut was quite comfortable--much more spacious than a tent and it had electricity. The beds weren't that comfortable, but they were better than sleeping on the ground. Our hut, J38, was just behind the huts shown in the link above. We were quite close to the river, which meant we had to keep a close eye on Lucas who isn't as naturally cautious as our other boys.


This picture looks like a Dad teaching his boys how to start a fire, but it isn't. I actually failed to get the fire going for any substantial length of time and Amy was subsequently assigned fire duty for the rest of trip.


Next time I'll cover our hike to Lower Yosemite Fall; the thing everyone does in Yosemite.

Mother's Day/Week

It has been the best Mother's Day/week ever. Someone in church last week must have told the kids something about Mother's Day, because all week William has been trying to do nice things for me.

He tried to make breakfast. He set the table and planned the meal. He decided he would make one of his own recipes, "sour yogurt" (yogurt with lemon juice squeezed into it), and have it with berries and watermelon. It was so fun to see him looking so proud.

He wanted to pick some wildflowers for me. There wasn't anyone else to go with him so I went with all the boys, even though William was hoping it could be a surprise. We ended up with a beautiful bouquet.

William wanted me to take a picture of him pretending to eat the flowers.

He volunteered to turn around the laundry when I mentioned that I was going to do it.

He started setting the table for dinner without being asked.

One morning, I woke up to a wrapped present by my bed and breakfast in bed. The present had William's special blanket for me to hug, and about 8 pictures of hearts and various members of our family holding hands.
Another one of William's own recipes is "bread rolls", which are pieces of the inside of bread smashed up into balls. For my breakfast in bed he made "adult bread rolls", which are broken smashed up pieces of the heel.  So cute.

This morning was the culmination, which was amazing, with support from Daddy. When I got up, I heard William say, "Mommy's coming down!" I didn't come down right away, and while I was doing things upstairs, I heard little feet running up and down and up and down the stairs, giving his reports: "Mommy's in the bathroom", "Mommy's getting ready to come down". Then I started to go downstairs, and a smiling William met me and told me to take a shower.

When I finally made it downstairs to a very clean living room and kitchen, I saw that the boys bought me some dark chocolate, a card, and pink roses.

The best part was breakfast. Justin said William had some strong ideas about what I would like for breakfast. I didn't want eggs, toast, and and orange juice. I wanted salad. 
This was the yummy result:

Justin found the recipe online.

This is what the boys looked like before church today.

William and Blaine have always been too scared to go up on the stand during sacrament meeting, but today they did it! I think Justin bribed them with candy, and it worked! William even stood at the front of all the kids and sang. He said he liked it, and I think he'll be more willing to go up when the primary sings in the future. We'll probably still have to work on giving talks.

It was the best Mother's Day/Week ever. I didn't even mention all the hugs and kisses and smiles, and "I love you's" I got. And, Justin has changed all the poopy diapers and accidents today (there have been a lot). Thanks, boys.

Happy Hollow Park & Zoo

Amy's been with the boys a couple times to Happy Hollow, a small amusement park and zoo down in San Jose. Last Saturday I got to go with them for the first time.

The Japanese Garden:



The park:






The zoo: