Our Summer in review: May

 I am feeling some unusual motivation to update the blog the last couple days and since I am looking for any reason to avoid packing, I figured I would start updating on our Summer happenings.  The beginning of May my beautiful niece, Marissa, got married.  I was lucky enough to be able to be a part of it.  Thank you girls, for making me feel young again.  That was seriously the funnest weekend I have had in a long time.  I think we need to have another bachelorette party just for the fun of it sometime soon.  We need to use our free classes, right??  :)

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The end of May we spent a week visiting my brother and his family who were living in Northern California on the Marble Mountain Ranch.  It was an awesome experience to go to a place that I never knew existed and get a glimpse of a different way of life than we are used to.  It is right in the middle of "Bigfoot Country" and there are just tons of tiny little towns strung along a long, winding, beautiful highway.  The school that my nieces went to had only 2 teachers in the entire school and their attendance actually influenced if they would need to keep the second teacher or let her go.  The way of life there really made me jealous, but there is no way I could drive on those roads everyday.  Anytime we went anywhere I had to prepare myself for a day of nausea.

This is our cabin.  Oh gosh, just looking at it makes me want to live there.

  

We had a little zip line right outside our cabin.  It was the perfect size, just small enough for the boys to be able to go on it, but big enough for it to be fun for me and Troy, too.

 Stockton sure took a liking to his cousin, Ireland.  It makes me sad that they don't get to see each other very often.  All of those girls awesome.

We spent a lot of time on the front porch enjoying the perfect weather and the peace and quiet.  The only downside was the mosquitoes.

One of the coolest things about the ranch is that it is almost 100% self sustaining.  They grow most of their own food and provide their own electricity.  It is run solely on hydro power.  We took a walk to see where they divert the water from the river to use.  It was beautiful and very cool to see.

We took a drive one day to the coast to go to the beach and see the Redwood Forest.  Just looking at these pictures reminds me how desperately I need a vacation and just some good family time with no distractions.

 For some reason Logan was terrified of the water.  He spent most of his time searching for rocks to throw and digging in the sand.

Stockton, on the other hand, spent the entire time getting chased by the waves.

We saw this herd of elk on the side of the road and had to stop and get a picture.

Troy's main motivation to go on the trip was to see the Redwood Forest.  He was very excited about it.  If you want to get him going sometime , just ask him about the Redwoods.  (Just kidding Troy, I love you!)  I am glad to have someone that enjoys learning about this kind of stuff so then I don't have to.

On our way home from the Redwoods I saw this sign posted on a billboard outside of a grocery store.  I just had to take a picture.  I am still debating contacting him just to see what kind of ideas he wants to kick around.