9:30a – Continental Breakfast at the Inn. Max had too much hot cocoa and blueberry mini-muffins. He is bouncing off the walls. We are headed out to the local park.

5:15p – It is very windy and very cold up here outside. We walked to the park and Max had a great time. He was very successful on the swing slide thing. Even baby had a good time in the little diaper swings. Then Toby had to leave because both toilets (women and men) were out of order. She refused my suggestion of backing into the urinal. Max and I hung out at the local marina, checking out the rental boats and the fishermen cleaning their catch. We munched on Tootsie Rolls and dropped rocks on the Carp.
For lunch we decided to check out Mammoth. They were having a Memorial Day festival and had some trampolines with bungie harnesses. Max wanted to try them out, which was a surprise because he is normally pretty cautious about those sorts of things. We waited in line for about an hour for his 5 minute bounce. He really wanted to do a flip and worked hard for most of the time. He finally made it all the way around just a few bounces before his time was up. What a proud father I am.
Weezy is not doing well, though. She has a fever and is a bit lethargic. We are pumping her with Motrin and Tylenol on a regular basis. Hopefully, it is just a temporary teething thing and she is not really too sick.

7:15a (the next day) – Night 2 of Weezy not sleeping all the way through. She woke up 3 times and then was done sleeping at 5:50a. Max and I are going on another hike to let the womenfolk sleep this morning.

We aimed to leave our house by 7:30a. We left Carpinteria before 8:00a. Not bad. We had a couple of small slip ups on the trip up. I missed the 126 in Ventura (I guess I thought I was going to work), and Toby got on the 14 South (instead of North) after a potty break at San Fernando Road. Not that big of a deal.

At Noon, we stopped for lunch in Lone Pine. At first it seemed like there was only a Carl’s Jr. in Lone Pine. That would have been bad. Toby is boycotting Carl’s Jr. due to the Paris Hilton commercial that they are running (she saw it during Americal Idol, when all the 9 yr olds were watching). Luckily, at the end of Lone Pine there was a McDonald’s. There also was a wonderful park. We spent about an hour in the park, eating lunch, playing on the playground, exploring the creek, eating grass (Weezy, did you guess?). It was a *great* way to break up the trip.

After 401 miles, we arrived in June Lake. The scenery around here is gorgeous. There are snow capped nountains all around us. The Heidelburg Inn is great as well. Toby upgraded us to a 2 bedroom, and she seems very pleased (which is good for everyone).

Don and Camille made the trip via motorhome from Portland, OR to June Lake in a leisurely 6 days. We are about a 5 minute walk from the RV park where they are staying. And, best of all…

…cable in the room!!!

The time before vacation is uber-stressful. As we prepare for our
week at June Lake, the stress levels in my house are hitting near record highs. I have 3 projects that I am trying to set into a good position to leave for a week, Toby gave a presentation at our weekly Lou Grant Parent Child Workshop meeting that she had been working on furiously for about 2 weeks, the van needed new tires (easy experience at Costco), the van needed the new tires aligned (almost awful experience at Firestone), Max had his final Cubbies meeting (which, unbeknownst to us, was an awards ceremony, that we were expected to attend)(Max got an award for ‘Newest Cubbie’). Seemingly, the solid rock in our week was Weezy. She happily crawled along, unaffected by any strain or stress. 🙂

Man – there’s just been this hysterical jump in movement and communication with this baby girl. Lou can clap, reach her arms up when you say ‘Uppie!’, do ‘please’ and ‘all done’ in sign language, understand when you say ‘Night-night’ (in sign), and put her toy phone to the side of her head when you say “hello?” The last one is the funniest – since 1/2 the time the phone ends up backwards or in the middle of her forehead. She’s crawling with a sort of gallop or trot – like a horse – when she’s excited. We’re having a really fun time. 🙂

I grossly underestimated the number of people that attended Max’s pre-school’s campout. There were nearly 200 people there. Everything went along very smoothly. The baby was content, Max was well-behaved and Toby slept better than expected.

Friday night, I put up the tent that was borrowed from the JMB family. I didn’t want to look like an idiot putting up the tent for the first time. (I needn’t have worried. Nearly every person that I saw putting up their tent was referencing the instructions. Some were even rotating the instructions and scratching their heads.) That tent was HUGE! It even had a divider to make it into 2 rooms.

We got to the camp ground at about 11a. There were about 10 families already there, so we had our choice of tent locations. The tent went up with the greatest of ease.

The school has a giant slip & slide for the kids to use, and it was a hit. Even Max, who hates getting wet, had a good time on it. There were kids on it for nearly 6 hours.

I will post some pictures, and a small AVI, so you can witness some aspects of our adventure.

Thanks again to the JMB family for the use of the tent. It worked great!