Oh Deer

There are a lot of deer living at the horse stables this year. There are at least 3 bucks (maybe 6 depending on if the group of 3 bucks I've seen twice are the same or not). There is a doe with two fawns, I've seen a doe with one fawn (or maybe thats the same deer with only one fawn with her), and one doe without any fawns.

I mostly see the deer on trail rides. Sedona is usually fine with me taking pictures of the deer, unless they jump out at us, then she freaks out.

This was the doe without any fawns. She let us get pretty close to her before running away.

The same doe, posing for the camera.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of the mother of two fawns, or the doe with one fawn (as she jumped out and totally spooked Sedona).

Trips this year

Since I didn't blog from January on, there are a lot of things we did that I didn't get to mention.

Starting in February. We went hiking. I took a ton of pictures. Unfortunately, most of them either weren't very good, or were of Kira posing randomly. Here is one I got that I do like

 I call it "Up". (Sorry, that's an inside joke that only Kira will get)

 We went skiing in Colorado over our winter break. I didn't get many pictures (I didn't really want to drop my phone in the snow or take off my glove in the freezing temperature to unlock my phone) but I did get this one of the scenery on our way up the mountain.

Colorado is really pretty. 

Only about a week or two after Colorado, my grade went to Yosemite. It was a long bus ride there and a longer bus ride back, but it was worth it. Yosemite was beautiful. We went on long hikes every day (we went from Sunday to Friday), and on Thursday, we went on a challenge hike. On Wednesday, we went cross country skiing. (Warning: Here come a lot of pictures)

This was a picture from one of our first hikes. I think it was on Tuesday. The water fall was called Bridle falls (or maybe it was Brindle fall, one of those). Unfortunately, you can see my thumb in this picture. I took a lot of pictures with my thumb in them with this camera. 

Anyway, on Monday, we went into the spider caves. It sounds like a cave crawling from floor to ceiling with spiders (or at least that's what I expected) but it is not. It is a small cave that you have to crawl through in pitch blackness. We had the person in front of us guide us, and we had to guide the person behind us. I don't know why it's called the spider caves. Maybe because you have to crawl like a spider.

  

This was a picture from our skiing day. My hiking group loved to have snowball fights. We picked up old, melting snow up as we hiked. So it was no surprise that we had a huge snowball fight during lunch.

This was just a tiny waterfall we passed sometime on one of our hikes. I think it was the Challenge hike.

I think I took this picture on the bus rid back from the skiing place. 

Towards the end of our Challenge hike, we got so high up, there was fresh(ish) snow. 

Yosemite falls! I don't know how to turn this picture, Sorry it's sideways!

Random pretty picture of Half Dome. I think this picture is my favorite that I took in all of Yosemite (which is why it is so big). I don't know where I was when I took it though.

In April, we went to DisneyLand! My favorite ride was Tower of Terror, but I also liked California Screaming. Tia likes roller coasters (like me). Kira doesn't, but she enjoyed the character themed slow rides. I also liked the Ariel theme ride, Indiana Jones, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

I went back to Disneyland in May for a Band trip. Our school's band and orchestra went to Disneyland for 2 days to play in a workshop. We got to learn easy music and record it to the Disney movie it came from. We played the background music at the end of the Lion King, from Atlantas, the song "When you wish upon a star", and background music from Cars 2.

We got Mickey Mouse ears from the Band trip!

In June, Tia and 5 other of my friends went to Girl Scout camp together. We did a high ropes camp, so we did high ropes every day. On the first day, we did a tour of the camp. On the second day, we hiked to Inspiration point (a very pretty view) and played some games. Next, we had Challenge course, where we balanced ourselves on a wobbling platform, swung on a rope and landed on a block, and did a low tightrope walk (with ropes to hold onto). After lunch, we did high ropes. I did another tightrope (with ropes to hold onto). The next day, we did Double Trouble on the ropes course. In that element, you tightrope across (holding onto one very wobbly rope the whole way), and switch ropes with your partner halfway across. Tia and I were partners. However out of all the elements, my favorite was the Leap of Faith. You jump off a tall tree (attached to a rope of course) and trust your group to lower you to safety.

I don't have any pictures yet from this year (they need to be developed), but this is the picture of our tent from last year.

Oh yeah, we had to set up tents this year and ours didn't have any poles!

The weekend we got back from camp, we went to Seattle Washington celebrate our Grandma's Birthday! We came on Saturday and went out to dinner with our Grandparents. The party was on Sunday, and Grandma got an iPhone. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from our trip except one of Tia and our Uncle playing Ping Pong in the backyard. 

Sorry that whole Blog post was ridiculously long! Next year, I'll try to blog as we do trips and Vacations so I don't pile them into one post.

Buddy's Adventure outside

Yesterday, it was very hot outside. So my sister's and I decided to have a water war. My mom came outside to check on us, and as soon as she opened the door to come outside, my cat Buddy dashed out. We weren't very worried Buddy was going to run away, he always comes to us.  He seemed want to stay outside, so I got his harness and leash on (a long time ago I bought him a harness and leash and tried to leash train him) and took hi outside. He loved the sun and being outside, but hated the harness. 

Buddy, rolling over on the deck because he didn't really like the harness.

Buddy, enjoying watching the birds up close as I hold him.

Buddy, rolling on the deck because he didn't like the harness, again.

That's pretty much a summary of our trip outside. After maybe five minutes, he wanted to go inside. We took the other two kitties outside with different results. I'll let Kira and Tia blog about that to you if they want.

Photos By Kira

Visiting

Last weekend we visited one of our cousins. We walked to the beach (it wasn't very far, you could easily walk too it).

We climbed a lot of  the rocks around the beach.

We also found some sea creatures.

And some weird looking ones.

On our way back from the beach, we met one of the cats that lived around the area. Apparently she is a great hunter.

Our trip in France

This was what we did at the airport with cool brand new suit cases.

I've blogged about our time in England, now I'll blog about our trip in France.

After we took the Chunnel to France, we found our hotel and went out to dinner with our cousins (all of which speak French). At the restaurant, we met a friendly black and white kitty that liked to be petted. 

After our dinner, we took a longer walk home and stopped at an ice cream place. I got a Mango sorbet (Mango in French is spelled Mangue). By the time we got to the hotel, we were all exhausted. I usually take a while to fall asleep, but that night, I instantly fell asleep. 

They next day, we met up with our little cousin's grandparents and walked through a garden, rode on a carousel, got more sorbet, and saw the Eiffel tower. Later that afternoon, we said good-bye to our little cousin's grandparents and rested at the hotel for a while. That evening, we went on a boat and bus tour and saw the Eiffel tower along with a more detailed tour of Paris. We got back to the hotel at 11pm, so again, I easily fell asleep.

We found a smoothie place for breakfast the next day and took another train to the countryside. It was a four hour train ride. When we got there, we got the rental cars, and drove to our rental house. France's countryside was very lush and green looking and smelling. It was also humid. The green humid smell reminded me of Texas

It wasn't very hot outside that night because although it was 10pm, it was sunset. But our house had no air conditioning. I got ready for bed and tried to fall asleep in my sisters's room, one of the five bedrooms (each bedroom had two beds). The covers were very thick in her room, so after an hour of going around the house to find a place to sleep, I found a comfortable bed.

The next morning, we went to a village to explore. The first thing we did was buy a bunch of bread. My cousin bought a stick of butter and some cheese. It was much hotter than the night before outside. So we waded in a nearby creek/river (I'm not sure, some body of water). We tried to catch the little fish that swam in the shallow water, but it didn't work. 

After that, we had lunch in a gardeny restaurant, were we met our third cat in Paris (the second one was a white kitty we saw near our yard, she was nice but shy.) This kitty was mostly black with long hair. During lunch, we had a minor accident with stinging nettle, I won't say who it happened to, but just so you know, honey helps the stings. 

We visited one more village and took a short walk around it. Since it was getting really hot and we were all melting, we left quickly. But not quick enough to avoid learning that a) the only air conditioned building in the village is closed on Tuesdays (it was a Tuesday) b) there was a gift shop with a really cool inflatable dolphin that we bought, and c) that there was a really good ice cream stand with sorbet for the vegans. 

We escaped into the air conditioned cars and drove home to cool of in the pool, but not soon enough to save the cheese and butter from… melting all over the car. 

That day in the pool, we named the dolphin Dorsee. I wanted to call her Dorsal because it seemed like a good dolphin name, but everyone started calling her Dorsee, and the name stuck. Me and my sister became more successful at riding her. I eventually learned how to jump off the edge of the pool and mount in mid air, but our cousin had trouble 'successfully' riding her. Having Dorsee made the pool a lot more fun.

Another cool thing that happened at the pool, was our little cousin learned how to swim by her self with water wings. While her mom was videoing her swim to her dad, Dorsee (because one of my sisters threw her) photo bombed the back ground. In the background, you can probably see a flying dolphin. 

The rest of our trip was similar to the first day. We explored villages and castles and swam in the afternoon. On the second day, we visited a medieval castle and found a rope dangling down from the ceiling. All of the kids and my dad climbed it. I was surprised I could climb it. When I took gymnastics (I was like 6) I was terrible at rope climbing.

Unfortunately, our trip zoomed by, and we had to say good-bye to our cousins. But over our trip, I learned a lot more French than I knew before. I learned about 32 new words and/or phrases in French. 

After the countryside, we visited the Eiffel tower.

We were monkeys even on the Eiffel tower.

Trips during School

In February, we went on a vacation and skied. I didn't blog about it because I don't usually blog during the school year. Before this trip my sisters and I had never skied or even really seen snow. On our first night, we flew in and spent the night at the hotel. But before we went to bed, we played in the snow in the parking lot of the hotel. It was first time we had been allowed to play in snow (we played in the snow at the car rental place, but we weren't allowed to then).

The next day we drove up to mountain we would ski on and went to our rental house. It was freezing when we got out of the car. It was 19 degrees and we weren't wearing snow pants or a scarf. After it warmed up and we got our snow pants, we sledded. For the rest of the week, we took skiing lessons and after lessons, skied with our parents.

Sledding

And skiing. The place we learned to ski didn't give you your poles until you were more advanced.

Another vacation we went on during school was over spring break. We went to visit our grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. We stayed at a relative's house. Their house was a block away from a fun park we played at about once a day. 

We went on a long hike one day in a beautiful forest. 

At the end of the hike was a beach, which we explored and climbed on the rocks.

On another day, we went to a different beach. The only rule our mom made was "Do not go in the water.". 

Obviously we listened

Camp!

I went to camp from a couple weeks ago. In this camp, you spent the night, rode horses, did archery, did art, completed challenge courses, tried high rope courses, stand up paddle boarded, and kayaked.

There are no pictures from camp because I didn't bring a camera.

                        

I came to camp with 3 other good friends from school. Luckily, we all got in the same tent, so we were able to sleep and hang out together.

I was in a horse back riding program. The first horse I rode wanted to go fast. He wanted to walk out and be faster than the other horses. That was a problem as we were third in line (there was a line of us walking our horses) and the two horses in  front of us were moving very slowly. On our next horse ride, we went on a trail ride. The horse I was riding wanted to trot and touch the horse in front (the touching the horse in front was according to one of my friends).

When we did the "paddle section of our trip we went to a harbor where we divided our time paddle boarding and kayaking. I think I liked stand up paddle boarding best. In our stand up paddle boarding time, we learned how to turn, paddle, and we played a game in which we switched paddle boards with a partner. In our entire lesson, I fell off twice. When we kayaked, we learned to paddle, turn, stop, and we did a relay race. During our kayaking lesson, we saw a seal barking at some people who were trying to get in their boat.