June Beginnings

Hi Everyone, it's been too long!  I've been wanting to post for a long time, and I think I am finally ready.  We'll see if I can see this through to the end.  Life is so busy!!
We had this awesome "family concert" where we and 2 other families put on musical numbers of different kinds for each other and a few neighbors that came.  We had voice, piano, clarinet, saxophone, violin, various recordings the little kids sang/danced to, poems recited, and a 4-part choral piece that Janelle accompanied.  Adults and kids performed alike.  It was good fun.  This is Melissa at her school's talent show.  If you can believe it, Melissa was the only child to play the piano:

So, one of the best days we've had recently was last Friday where we took the kids a couple of hours to the East into the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  We have really enjoyed this park for the snow as well as the camping.  This time instead of camping we decided we would just set up for a long day.  We had a tent for napping and our blanket out on the ground.  We brought our stove for re-frying our beans for dinner and cooking our corn.  Christine finished a Faith in God achievement by planning and mostly preparing our picnic.  We ate egg salad sandwiches, cherries, chips, and carrot sticks. 

It was awesome to climb across a fallen tree that has been there since at least 1951.   One way we know this is because of the carvings people have left in the trunk over the years.  The oldest ones we could find were from the 1950s.  After lunch we went on a mile-and-a-half trail in the North Grove.  There are about 75 groves of sequoias in the world and they are all located on the west slopes of the Sierra Nevadas.  What makes them different from the towering Redwoods are that they are larger in width and mass and don't rely on the coastal fog for water.  They have relatively shallow roots and the weak ones can be blown over in severe wind storms, but for the most part the strong and symmetrical ones live thousands of years (many of them grow in a spiral pattern for strength underneath the bark).  Some of the fallen branches measure 7 feet in diameter.  There is so much to learn about these trees.  Brent and Melissa, remember when we met at Sequoia Nat'l Park and hiked?  That was fun.

And here is a look at Natalie just learning to crawl.  She started crawling on the very day she turned 9 months.  True story.  Why do kids do this?  This is not the first time such things have happened with us, I'm telling you. 
Well, I'll going to call that a post!  I'm going to set a goal that I or one of the kids will post again before we come out in a couple of weeks.  See ya!