Out to the Seashore

We stopped at a nice vista on our way to MacKerricher State Park to catch a peek of the beautiful view and to ease our tummies from the winding road trip.


At the visitor's center we stopped to take a look at the whale skeleton. Here's Hayden next to the whale's humerus.


We looked at all the whale's "arm" bones and Isaiah showed us where he broke his radius and ulna. We also saw where Ry broke his scapula.

These are the remnants of the whales "leg" bones. Since they no longer have a function, they're called vestigial structures.

The Peterson's on their way out to the tide pools.


It was tough to get too many pictures of the critters in the tide pools, but I got a few that turned out. The green looking blobs are sea anenomes that are closed up to keep from drying out. The shells belong to the hermit crabs that stole them from snails. We saw the crabs fighting over bigger shells that they wanted to move into and teeny tiny crabs the size of an ant running around all the kelp and trying not to get eaten by the big guys.














Here you can barely sea a purpley sea star clinging to the rock.














After the tidepools we went out to Glass Beach. I remembered going here in junior high and the beach was all colored glass that was left from when the area was used as a dump. There was still a little bit of glass, but it was mostly just a bunch of of metal and junk...

You can see old pieces of cars and who knows what else. The water here is all discolored from the metals dissolving and leaching into the ocean.
So sad...










It was kind of a sad way to end the trip. I hate when you have a memory of a place and then you go back to find that it wasn't like you thought it was originally. At least I can use this to show my students and help them learn to respect the planet.

More Camping...

We didn't take many photos of camping except of Hayden, so as we were cleaning up Kyle took some shots of the site. Here's Bill and Ryan doing a final sweep to make sure we didn't leave anything...

I'm helping out a lot by practicing balance beam on a fallen tree...

Poor Tucker was the only one that didn't get to shower at the campsite.

Isaiah has Ryan's luck when it comes to injuring himself. He had to deal with a broken arm the entire time and try to do the impossible for a 10 year old while camping - keep his cast clean and dry.

Erin's Worst Nightmare...

Dirty BABY!! AAAAAHHHH!

Hayden had such a blast during our camping trip rolling in the dirt, eating the dirt, and throwing the dirt. Perhaps his favorite thing of all was S'more time! He was a little hesitant at first, but when he got a taste of all that sugar...

He was all smiles! Then he was so hyper that he kept the entire campground entertained with his baby jabbering all night.

Here's Hayden and all his dirty baby glory hanging out by Isaiah's tent.

He is so cute when he plays Peek-A-Boo!

Here's the poor guy right before I smacked him in the face to kill those two mosquitos feasting on his forehead. Poor thing had bites all over his face no matter how much we sprayed him. Bugs must love Dirty Baby!

After a day of letting him get as dirty as he could, Erin just couldn't take it anymore and we had to give him a bath in one of our camping boxes. He was having a blast splashing anyone that came near his impromtu bathtub. What a cute lil nephew I have!

Disc Golf in SLO

Kyle and I headed down to SLO for a nice relaxing weekend to hang out with Rhiannon and Corey before Brock makes his big appearance. When we were there we went out to Sinsheimer Park to play some disc golf.

Its too bad we didn't get any pictures of me playing, because I have such "creative" form. In fact, at the first hole I had such a powerful follow through that I fell off the platform and landed right on my back. Kyle was pretty impressed.

Here's a shot of the 8th hole with Bishop's Peak in the background. Despite my creative form I actually ended up kicking Kyle's butt on a few of the holes. If only I could do that in real golf!

Beautiful SLO at sunset. I hope someday we can move back here!

YeeHaw!! Howdy from Texas Ya'll!

Cowgirl Jessica here, saying hi from the Stockyards in Fort Worth Texas! I'm out here visiting the southern belle, Brie and enjoying some of the hot Texas summer!






















Looks like we got here just in time to see some Texas Longhorns being driven down East Exchange Avenue. This is part of the daily cattle drive through this historic part of the city.


After this we'll be sure to grab some awesome Texas BBQ and check out all the shopping! (This is me after all!)

One year to go!

One year to go until Kyle and I officially become the Cormany Couple!

Kyle, Mom, and I went down to SLO for the weekend to see family and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Kyle was such a good sport listening to my mom and I talk wedding all weekend as we measured the yard, and shopped for my dress, and picked out plants for centerpieces, etc... He was even a good enough sport to pose for some pictures.



I can't lie, the first time I set foot in this yard (after dating Kyle for only a week) I knew I wanted to get married on these steps. And in one year from now, we'll be back here saying our vows! I'm so thankful that Kirk and Candace are letting us get married at their beautiful home. I feel like our day will be so much more special because we are sharing it with them.

Lost in the Woods

Natalie and I decided to beat the heat and head out for a nice hike through some redwoods. We packed snacks, highlighted a map of our trails, and donned our most comfy shoes for a nice afternoon trek. All was going nicely except none of the trails seemed to make much sense when we looked at our map and it was taking us much longer to find our destination (a field filled with ladybugs) than we expected.

Just when we were thinking we were lost we saw a sign!











Hmm... The Iverson trail. One of the trails we were looking for, but the sign was on the ground and there was no way to tell which direction to take. So we chose to keep on trekkin...
And then we saw this!









All the signs had been pulled out! No wonder we were lost.

We came to a creek and decided to cross because it looked promising on the other side and we didn't want to backtrack all the way to the beginning. After I saw Natalie get her shoes all wet by stepping on some wobbly rocks I decided to take the fallen log across. Looks like I still have some gymnast in me!










Once we climbed the bank of the creek and got to the main road we saw the backs of a whole bunch of signs.










These would have been helpful! Apparently we had missed a turn and ended up on a trail that was no longer open. Yikes! Well, we did find our field eventually, but there were no ladybugs. However, we did find some liverworts (a non-vascular plant that is similar to a moss). Yeah, we're cool science teachers, haha. Well, it was a pretty fun hike even though we got lost in the woods for a bit!