Spring Break Part 1 - Sequoia Nat'l Park

Hallelujah! His Hotness survived a brutal 3-days of work on a take home final and we were free to enjoy Spring Break with no thought of school... or at least with less thought of school. The best part of this Spring Break was having our Jellie-bellie with us. Our breaks were back to back so after a little figuring out we were able to have her for both weeks. The Hubs, Squirt, and I drove down to California to pick up our little bug. After like 7 hours driving and a quick hotel stay, we met her at Ihop and the adventure began!

From Ihop we headed straight to Sequoia National Park. 

This is the first of our National Park adventures that has all four of us, which means it's pretty darn special. Although, it also means that getting pictures where we are all on the same page for smiling or being silly is a little harder.

The park is lovely, though I confess that His Hotness and I prefer the Redwoods. The cinnamon-red color of the Sequoia bark is absolutely gorgeous though. We had fun speculating why there was no moss or lichen growing on the bark and then asked a ranger and learned it's because of the natural tanin in the bark - it has antimicrobial and fire resistant properties so it protects the trees from bugs and other threats.

We stopped at the Visitor's center for a stamp in our National Parks Passport and the girls got to explore. Ellie kept running around yelling "It's science!" I think her dad and I were both pretty proud of that.

We camped in the park and our site was fairly large. We picked it partly because there were other little girls adjacent to it. The girls made friends and were playing (without even knowing each others names) after about 6.4 seconds. I really wish our kids were more outgoing...

As it turns out, the other family was just there for the day and didn't stay the night. We set up camp and went exploring, after which some stick and pinecone baseball lessons were in order.

It was so nice when we left Visalia that His Hotness was in shorts (ok, nothing new there) and I was in a knit skirt and sandals. He may always dress like that, but I often put real shoes on when there is snow on the ground. That day I was too lazy to dig my tennis shoes out of the trunk and figured it couldn't be too bad. As long as we stayed on the main path all was well, but of course we had to venture elsewhere for a picture and that got a tad bit chilly.

We headed back to camp and played until dark, when we roasted S'mores. The Hubs doesn't like marshmallow but humored us and ate some anyway, while Jellie-bellie had never had one before! Her verdict? She likes the crackers and chocolate but not the "gooey part." Looks like it wasn't as exciting of a treat as I'd hoped. The camping however was a great success.