The Really Really Great Outdoors

The outdoors in general are great.
But the outdoors in Yosemite, California are SPECTACULAR.
To the left is a picture of my firstborn, Mini, sitting atop Glacier Point last week.  I'm generally too nervous to post pictures of my kids on this blog (since it's public), but I figure the back of her head should keep her pretty anonymous right?  I'd hate to have the Dairy Council come after her or something... hehehe.

So.
While making food preparations for our week away from home (which involved freezing enough boxes of rice and soy milk to use for the entire week - since I have never ONCE seen a box of alternative milk for sale at any gas station in Nevada), I sent out an email to all my in-laws who would be traveling with us, detailing our little milk-free experiment this summer.  I felt it was vital to keep everyone on the same page, since we would be hours from an emergency room, and an attack w/o an ER nearby could be fatal.  No milk seems like a pretty small price to pay for children staying alive and well, right?

Well, the response I got was awesome.  My brother-in-law was the only one to respond, and he basically said, "Milk?  Have you ever seen anyone in this family drink milk?  Your kids will be drinking Coke all week, duh.  Don't even worry about it."  Yeah, good point.  I don't know what I was so worried about.  I let go of all my sugar standards for this one week, and figured that what happens in Yosemite stays in Yosemite.  And sure, they might get cavities, but a little lemonade/soda never killed anyone, right?  Well, not immediately anyway.  Unlike a dairy-induced asthma attack.

So to make a long story short, Mini, Pickle and Yummy all did very well.  And they all fell in love with Yosemite, just like I did when I first went as a newlywed in the summer of 2002.  I knew it would last when I saw how sweet my husband was with me as I had my first (and only ever) full-blown panic attack halfway up the cables on Half Dome, then proceeded to the top where I found a low spot and sat with my eyes closed until it was time to go back down.  Oh, and my sister-in-law's post-hike foot care will never be forgotten either...  I married into a good family.  I owe them big for introducing me to Yosemite.

Mini's thinking perhaps next time we could stay for a whole summer.  I'm assuming she'll be independently wealthy by that time (perhaps with a back-of-the-head modeling contract?) so I said sure, why not?