I am back...

It is been a while, but I am back from vacation in Yosemite National Park.  It was a good vacation.  It gave a good getaway from Vegas, and a good perspective on the park and when to visit.

Above all it was really nice to be with my wife and two kids for 12 days strait, basically all day with them each day.  The few times I went on a hike and they stayed at camp it seemed really weird that they weren't with me.  That is really cool to feel like that. 

Some things I learned were as follows (these were the biggest complaints I guess as well)

• Be sure to check your sleeping pads before you leave.  Nice big thick pads do nothing for you if they have a hole...
• Plan on food that is bad for you as well, not just healthy food.
• Have a way to recharge you compy if you must take a lot of pictures.
• It is okay to  be packed a day ahead of time, the late night prior to leaving is a better time to rest than pack.
• Arrive very early for a campsite if there is any chance it may be full (we actually we early and had no real issue getting a campsite)
• Be prepared to be in a congested campsite (more congested than my current apartment complex by the way) if you want to camp in Yosemite valley!
• Always if possible bring grandparents, they are totally awesome!
  

Those are some of the bigger ones that come to mind.  Really overall we did well.  I planned very well, and I feel great about the food Alison planned for us even though she had a harder time with it than I did.

Our kids proved our theory correct as well about camping with kids.  If you keep them warm, dry (for the most part, actually getting wet is okay), and fed they will be happy about anywhere.  The biggest problem we had with Zach was that he started really getting his imagination going and somehow got in his head that there were monkeys trying to come out of the trees and get him.  It started as "Mommy, Daddy monkeys in trees!" this helped him have fun driving everywhere.  Then it turned into them coming into the tent when he was supposed to be going to sleep.  But over 11 nights we had only 1 bad night and 1 iffy night.  Otherwise it was as good as at home.  I think the kids slept far better than us ironically!

The other thing I recommend doing is getting you kids scared of fire.  Zach hated the smoke and also was scared of me lighting it any time I picked up the lighter.  This was because he once was closer than his comfort level when I lit some white gas on the stove and then again on the fire.  After that he was scramming every time I got close to the flame.  This really helped with him wanting to do unsafe things with the fire.  Unfortunately the 1 year old (almost, only 5 days or so) never got scared at all.  She would have crawled into it if I had let her.  Oh well.

Now I am getting ready to plan next years trip...It did take about 8 months of time planning and discussing and preparing for this trip, luckily we spread it out over that time so we were able to do things gradually as they needed to be done.

Vacation...

Well Alison, Zach, Andrea and I are headed on vacation.  We play a lot, yes, but this is actually a planned and hoped for vacation.  We are headed for Yosemite National Park.  We are going to get a broad overview of the park visiting the valley, and the high country.  Most people never visit anything besides the valley and this takes up only 7 square miles of more than a 1000 in the actual park. 

Alison and I have been before together, and it was only about 3 days and we wanted to stay longer but it was a trip up the coast, not a trip up to Yosemite only.  That trip was actually our longest trip yet together at about 2 weeks.  It was hard because we just kept traveling the entire time.  This trip will hopefully be better because we will only move camp once in the 13 days and 12 nights we will be there.

I have planned a variety of things that we can do while there and Alison has prepared very nice food that for the most part only needs to be re hydrated for cooking and that is it.  This will leave us open to more playing with great food without the need to spend a good deal of time actually cooking. 

This trip unlike others we have planned and prepared for actively for weeks.  We have planned it for months, but the last few weeks we have been doing lots of little things that always take forever the day or so before we leave.  Leaving tomorrow morning we are doing better than usual but the magnitude of the trip is catching up to us.  So we will see how much work we have to do tonight...

We have also tried to prepare a head of time because tonight is ward temple night and we always try and go together to this.  So we will have to be ready before then!