Family Adventure Day 2013!

I just realized that I did not do an entry last year for our annual adventure day.  We went to Columbia, a gold town in Northern California.  To see all the photos from that Adventure Day, click HERE and HERE.

This year, for our 6th annual Family Adventure Day, we went to the Kings & Sequoia National Parks on 10 August 2013.  We saw the Giant Sequoias and climbed to the top of Moro Rock.  We saw some beautiful country and then drove into Visalia for dinner.  It was a fun day!

Entering Kings Canyon National Park

and Sequoia National Park

A panoramic view of the General Grant tree

Katrina, Rebecca and Amanda in front of the General Grant tree

Kevin and Lora by the General Grant tree

Kevin and Amanda

Amanda, Lora, Katrina and Rebecca climbing to the top of Moro Rock

Amanda, Lora, Katrina and Rebecca at the top of Moro Rock

Video of Katrina and Rebecca announcing their presence at the top of Moro Rock

A panoramic view from the top of Moro Rock

A photo attempting to show how steep the steps are to the top of Moro Rock

Our dinner at The Habit in Visalia

To see all the photos from our Adventure Day, click HERE

The Nehring Christmas Card 2012

All year long I have great intentions to post things on our blog, but I never seem to have the time.  So, here, condensed, is our year -- in the form of our yearly Christmas letter/card.

Merry Christmas!

Canning Pickles

I love this cartoon! (by Pat Bagley)

I had my first experience canning today! Thankfully I started with something fairly easy so I wasn't overwhelmed and never wanted to do it again. We had a class in Relief Society about Pickling and I was very excited to try it!



I got all the ingredients together and this morning I cut up cucumbers and onions and put them in a bowl with a sweet pepper and salt and let them sit for three hours.



I drained the cucumbers/onions and put them in the brine to cook.



When they were hot, I put them in the jars and put the lids on. I boiled them for 10 minutes to seal them.



Voilà!! I have beautiful jars of Bread & Butter pickles. They are delicious!!

A really fun birthday present

We are not big believers that kids need phones, but at the end of the school year when Lora couldn't get ahold of Amanda on several occasions, she called Kevin and said, "I know what we are getting Amanda for her birthday!"

We spent some time researching phones, as we wanted her to have a decent phone, but we don't have texting on our phones, so no texting, no internet, etc. We finally found the one that we wanted to get her, only to have another one start to look interesting. We finally decided on that one, as it had a slider, etc., and it would be a "cool" phone for a teenager to have.

When we called to order it, of course, they were out of the phone, so we did some quick deciding again via a three-way call with the service representative and finally came to rest on the Pantech Link. We also decided that it wouldn't be reasonable to have a teenager's phone with no texting capabilities, so we changed our data plans and added unlimited texting for all three phones, which worked out to the same price that we are paying now.

We ordered the phone.....and then came the fun part.

We bought an 8G memory card, as Amanda has been saving her money to buy an iPod, and we loaded it with several of her favorite songs. (So, now she can spend her money on earphones, as the audio connection on this phone is an oddball one.)

Lora created two ringtones, on Harry Potter and one Star Wars. A few days before Amanda's birthday we activated the phone and then tested them out to make sure you would be able to hear them from inside the box. It took a few tweaks, but we got it to work!

A few days before, Lora texted a ton of people and asked them to send Amanda a text at 8:30pm wishing her a Happy Birthday. We were afraid that if we took Amanda's presents to the restaurant (we always let them pick a restaurant to have their birthday dinner) she would not be able to hear the phone ringing, so we figured we would be able to be back from the restaurant by 8:30pm. We also figured her reaction would be too exuberant for a restaurant and there would be a mess of plates on the table.


Amanda chose Sizzler for her birthday dinner, as she wanted to get the shrimp plate. Gramma Carol joined us. We ended up leaving the restaurant much later than we expected.

Both Kevin and Lora had been very careful to erase or hide everything off their phones and off Lora's computer so that there would be no trace for Amanda to find. On the way home from the restaurant, Amanda asked if she could play on Lora's phone. We were five minutes from home and Lora knew there was nothing on the phone that might give them away, so she said yes. The FIRST THING Amanda said when she got Lora's phone in her hand was, "Why does it say that your phone called me?" Lora just about had a heartattack!! What?! She played it cool and pretended she had no idea what it could be (and in reality she didn't) as Amanda kept going on about how could Lora call her "future" phone if she didn't have one.

SOMEHOW Lora's purse had called Amanda's phone while we were all at the restaurant!! Talk about freakish timing! Arg!!

We got home at about 8:40pm, and we were getting Amanda's presents together and there was a soft chirping chime one of the boxes. The girls kept asking what the noise was and Kevin told them it was probably one of our cameras. Then Kevin called the phone and Harry Potter music started playing. You should have seen the looks on their faces!!



Amanda opened her gifts, and periodically the box would chime, or Harry Potter music would play. Each time the girls would stop and say, "there is the Harry Potter music again! I DID hear it!"

She opened the box from us last. As she unwrapped it, Lora called her phone and Star Wars music started playing. THAT really got her wondering.

She opened the box and was absolutely stunned. Like she just sat there with her mouth open, staring at the box! She said "I'm happy!"




There were already 12 messages on her phone and she began to read each birthday wish. As she did, the phone kept chiming as more and more messages came in. It was WONDERFUL!! Perfect!!



She sat and texted thank yous to everyone and texted back and forth with her cousins, and tried to figure out things on her new phone.

There are a big list of rules that go with the phone, but she was so happy to actually have one, and Kevin and Lora are very grateful that they will be able to get a hold of her when they need to!

Here is the video of her opening the box. It's several minutes long.



Thank you so much to everyone for texting her and making this an amazingly fun birthday gift for her!!

Our very late Christmas greeting

Well, here it is, past the middle of January, and I am finally getting to our Christmas card and letter. Enjoy! : )



Greetings to all our family and friends!! We are little behind on getting our greetings out this year. We loved hearing from all of you this year and are happy to hear that you are all doing so well. We appreciate and love all of you and hope that you are planning a wonderful New Year! When we consider our blessings for this year, you are all at the top of the list!!

Amanda turned 13 this year and is in 8th grade. She is one of the best snare drummers on the Middle School drum line and she tried out for Girl’s basketball and made the team!! She is doing exceptionally well in school and volunteers at the local library. Amanda got to travel all by herself to Alaska this summer and visited with Gma Kathryn and Gpa Herb. Among many things while she was there, she got to do a Wolf Encounter at the Alaska Zoo. She liked that very much! Amanda also went to her first year at Girl’s Camp and had a great time!

Rebecca is 10 this year and in 5th grade. She is doing well in school and she loves writing her own stories like crazy! This summer Rebecca got to spend a week all by herself with Gma Carol and Papa in Auberry. She had a great time and Gma Carol helped her to sew her own skirt. Rebecca is also learning how to crochet and is enjoying that very much. Rebecca has continued with her piano lessons and likes to memorize the pieces so she can play them anywhere there is a piano. Rebecca is also growing her hair out so she can donate it to Locks of Love. She can’t wait for it to be long enough to cut off. She likes her hair short.

Katrina is 5 this year and started Kindergarten! She has been waiting to start school for as long as she knew what it was and she is so happy to be there this year. She loves her teacher and is doing very well, reading and writing above her grade level. Katrina loves to read books, and loves to sing, dance, color, and play games on the computer. Katrina is trying to learn her place in the world and sometimes is fussy about not knowing this VERY SECOND. It is very hard for a 5 year old to be patient. Sigh. : ) Katrina got her ears pierced recently and is taking good care of them and looking forward to when she can wear different earrings!

Kevin’s work has steadily increased over the past six months, for which we are very grateful. They now have a backlog which they haven’t had for 2 1/2 years, which is hopefully a good indicator that the economy is slowly turning around. Kevin is involved in many different organizations, continuing his position on the Kerman Planning Commission, and as President of the San Joaquin Chapter of the California Land Surveyors Association. This year he has been serving on Sheriff Mims’ Fresno County Sheriff’s Citizens Advisory Committee and has recently become the Vice President of the Fresno County Neighborhood Watch Committee. He also continues as webmaster of the Honda Rider’s Group.

Lora is doing a lot of volunteer work, helping in the girl’s classrooms, serving on two school site councils, the Bond Oversight Committee for the new school being built in Kerman, and this year became the President of the Friends of the Kerman Branch Library. Lora lost weight this year and then gained it back. Grrr! She continues to work her own business from home and also attends the Temple weekly. She has done a lot of family history this year and is working on trying to compile it all onto a program that she can share!

We have had a few adventures this year. In March Lora and the girls travelled to the coast to see Lora’s Gpa and to have some fun. We also drove to the Palm Springs area in November to spend Thanksgiving with both of Lora’s brothers and their families! It was the first time we had all been together in five years and four of the kids had not even been born then, so it was a wonderful time to spend together. The kids had fun and so did the grown ups!! We have had visits from Lora’s parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and past missionaries who served in Kerman. And, of course, we see Lora’s Gma Willie often and Kevin’s family almost every Sunday.

We hope you have a great year in 2011. Please keep in touch. We love to hear how you are all doing!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

This was a wonderful holiday weekend!! Absolutely wonderful!! A few weeks ago my brother Jordan -- who lives in Alaska with his wife, Sioux-z, and their two daughters, Isabel and Ivy -- called and said that they were going to be in Palm Springs (actually, La Quinta, a town a little bit to the east) for Thanksgiving, and he was hoping that we could come down to spend it with them. He was also going to call my youngest brother, Jeremy -- who lives in Castaic with his wife, Renee, and their twins, Lily and Zachary -- to see if they could be there too. It worked! The last time we were all together was five years ago. I was pregnant with Katrina, Sioux-z was pregnant with Ivy, and Lily and Zachary were not even a twinkle in their parent's eyes yet.

We left Kerman on Wednesday afternoon and drove out through the high desert and then down to La Quinta. As we drove through Tehachapi it was 29 degrees and there were mounds of old snow that had been plowed off the parking lot of the gas station where we stopped. It was cold, but the sky was clear and the moon was bright! We got to La Quinta very late and quickly unpacked and got some sleep.

On Thursday morning we had breakfast and then went to one of the community pools. It was a heated pool, and the girls had a great time! Jordan and I got to sit and talk and we had a great time. Usually when we are getting together it is for an event of some sort (wedding, graduation, etc.) and the event is the focus, but this time we could just sit and talk and relax. It was so nice!

When Jeremy and Renee arrived all the cousins were so excited to be together!

We started getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a ham, a turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing, vegetables, sweet potatoes and rolls. We brought the large patio table in and, together with the dining room table, we had a perfect tablefor all of us. We set the table with the place cards that the girls made with Gma Kathryn while she was here visiting a few weeks ago.

Dinner was lovely! As we began to eat we offered a Thanksgiving toast and then Jordan asked everyone what they were thankful for. Most of us said how grateful we were to be together this Thanksgiving! After dinner we had pie (I made the pecan and pumpkin), checked out the deals for Black Friday in the newspaper (nothing enticed us out early), and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

We also tried to Skype with Dad and Mom. There were 13 million people on Skype, so we had a bad connection with Dad. Later, we got to talk to Mom on Google video chat. (I forgot to take a photo of that one.) It was great to be able to have all seven grandkids waving in the camera for each grandparent to enjoy. And for all three kids as well. Technology is pretty cool!

On Friday morning we all went for a hike up the Indian Trail. When I say up, I mean UP!! The trail went up the hills behind the community. Sioux-z, Amanda, Rebecca and Isabel forged ahead and got to the top long before the rest of us. Katrina did not want to hike up, so she and Kevin stayed at the bottom. Jordan, Jeremy and I, along with Lily, Zachary and Ivy, worked our way slowly to the top. About 3/4 of the way up, the rest passed us on the way down. Sioux-z took the little kids, and Jordan and Jeremy and I finished the climb together and spent a few minutes at the top of the climb.

In the afternoon the kids went on the boats with Jordan, Jeremy and Sioux-z and then they went to the pool again while Kevin and I went to see what was in the area (we hadn't left the community the whole time), and Jeremy and Renee drove around so their kids could get a nap. Kevin and I found a few caches and then drove back.

Friday night, after the kids had gone to bed, the six adults sat in the kitchen and played Go Fish and War with Hello Kitty playing cards. We all laughed and talked and laughed and laughed and laughed some more! It was so much fun!! We wished that could have lasted forever!!

Saturday morning we packed up and headed for home. It took us seven hours to drive down, and we had a few other stops to make along the way, so we started how at a little after 10am. We all waved and yelled good-bye and waved some more! It was hard to leave after such a great few days!!



As we headed for Riverside, Katrina suddenly yelled out that she could dinosaurs on the side of the road, so we stopped in Cabazon to see the dinosaurs. It was incredibly windy, so we snapped a few photos and then got on the road. In Riverside, we went to the Riverside National Cemetery where my grandfather, Donald Caman, and his wife, are interred. The last time I saw my Gpa Caman, was when Amanda was 18 months old. I have a photo with me and Amanda, Jordan and Jeremy and Gpa Caman together. We found their headstone and took some photos.

We travelled back towards home, stopping here and there to find some geocaches. We stopped in Tehachapi for dinner, and we had sleet on the window. There was snow on the hills surrounding the city. It rained on us all the way down into the Valley and on and off all the way home. We got home before 9pm and were happy to be sleeping in our own beds! It was a lovely, lovely vacation!!! It was so nice to be together with my brothers and their great wives! The kids had a great time together and had a wonderful time!! I hope it won't be another five years before we all get together again.

Sundae?

Kevin & Lora went to Chevy's for dinner on tonite. Lora got a sundae for desert, a sundae described as "one of the smaller ones".

Surprise! "Small" is a relative term.

We think the guy in the back just finished one.

Date Night!

This weekend Kevin and I went out on a triple date with our good friends Eddie and Cory Molloy and Steve and Andrea Kaufman, to celebrate Steve's birthday. We went to the Yosemite Falls Cafe for dinner. We laughed a lot, ate some delicious food, and took some great photos! The staff of the restaurant even came over to sing to Steve and brought him a special ice cream sundae. After dinner we went back to the Molloys for a movie and root beer floats. It was a lot of fun! It is so nice to spend time with good friends!




Andrea Kaufman, Cory Molloy and Lora Nehring lookin' smokin' hot!



Lora and Kevin

A New Record - 36 finds!

On our trip to LA and back, Kevin and I managed to break our family's previous record of 34 finds in a day! Today we got 36! Awesome!

On Saturday when we were heading down to LA to the concert, we weren't going to do any caches on the way down, we were just going to hustle down there and cache on the way home. As we were heading into Tulare, Kevin suddenly went veering off the freeway onto the offramp to get a cache that he decided at the very last minute that we had to get RIGHT THEN! The cache was in a mobile home park and it was hidden in a cairn in the front of one of the mobile homes. It was really good that we stopped when we did, as the cache owner, California Cash Cow, and his wife, were packing all their belongings into a trailer to move to a new house. We were probably the last ones to find the cache at this location. We ended up being there for an hour, swapping stories and discovering each others geocoins and travel bugs. His dog and his truck are both travel bugs, which we thought was GREAT!!

On Sunday, after we had a nice visit and breakfast at Denny's with Jer and Renee and the twins, we were on our way home - the LOOOONG way! We started with several caches north of Castaic and then we headed out the 138 towards Palmdale to the northern Ridge Route. There were 18 caches on that leg of the route that we hadn't found yet. We love those caches! Great scenery and great history and we even met a few other cachers along the way. We also did a lot of benchmarking. Kevin even found a gravity station, one he has never found before! He was very excited! Out of all the caches we went looking for today we only had 2 DNFs (did not find), and those are pretty great stats! At one cache we saw a bobcat! It was too fast for our camera, but impressive none-the-less. We had a great time!

When we went through Bakersfield we stopped to see Kevin's grandparent's house. Kevin's dad has been down for weeks getting the house ready to be sold, as his grandmother lives in a nursing home in Modesto now. As we walked around the back porch and yard, Kevin was pointing things out to me and telling me memories he had about them from when he was younger. He took a lot of photos, too.

Then we headed back to Kerman to gets our girls. It was a nice weekend to spend together!

See all the Geocaching pics HERE.
See all the CA Cash Cow pics HERE.
See all the Bakersfield pics HERE.

Nightwish - Part 3

Okay! It's official! We are Nightwish groupies!! This is the third concert in a year that we have seen them. (We actually debated about going to the San Francisco show the night before, but we really thought that would be excessive!)

We drove down to LA on Saturday morning and we got to the Wiltern at about 4:20pm. There was already a line forming on the north side of the theater. Since we had seen told that the box office would open at 5:00pm, and there were only six people ahead of us, we figured we would just stay there to pick up our will call tickets. 5:00pm came and went, and the will call line got longer and longer. 5:30pm. Someone comes out and tapes a sign above my head that says this line is for LiveNation.com ticket holders. (We bought our tickets from Enter the Vault.com) 5:45pm. A few people in Wiltern shirts came out and everyone would try to get information out of them, but each time and with each person there would be different and conflicting information. We were told at one point that if we had enterthevault.com will call tickets we were to definitely stay in the line we were in. Ten minutes later, at 6:00pm, the same lady who said that walked by us saying that the enterthevault.com ticket holders were to follow her to the back of the building. Since she was walking from the front of the line to the back, the line kind of reversed itself and we ended up being much farther back in line. Arg! Now we waited at the back of the building for another 45 minutes before they started giving us our tickets. (We got a kick out of the fact that there were signs that made three lines, A-G, I-Q and R-Z. Those of us in line speculated as to what would happen if your last name started with H. Would they not let you in? Was there a separate line behind the dumpsters just for the H's? Too funny and very indicative of the chaos and disorganization we experienced.)

I should say though that we had a great time talking to several of the people that we were standing next to. The two guys who had driven from SLO were the best! It was also fun to people watch all the cars and pedestrians going by. When the cars would pull up to the light we would watch the passenger crane their necks to see the marquee and then you could see them mouth, Nightwish?! Their reactions to the lines around the building were varied and often comical. Most of the people in line were dressed in black and looking very goth (in fact one of the Wiltern staff actually stopped twice and jokingly told Kevin, who was dressed in jeans and a red plaid button-down shirt, that he still had time to go home and change) and one mother and several small children walked by looking a bit fearful. Kevin said he caught the eye of the smallest child and smiled and the kid broke into a big grin! It was funny!

At 7:00pm we finally had tickets with our names on them in our hands and we now had to go around the building and join the line that had been steadily increasing in size since we got there. We first went across the street to a pharmacy, used their restrooms and then bought two granola bars so that we would have something to "eat" before we went into a three hour show. (After standing in line for two and a half hours by now.)

At 8:00pm on the dot (the watch on the arm of the man standing behind us in line beeped at exactly the same moment we started moving forward) we started into the theater. The Wiltern is a gorgeous old Art Nouveau movie theater that has been converted to a music venue. The outside was impressive, but the inside was phenomenal! Our photos do not remotely do it justice! It was beautiful!

We got a spot on the second tier back from the stage and we were behind some people who were standing at the railing. From that vantage point we were level with the people who were on the stage. It was a great spot to be in! There was a screen above the stage that people could text messages to and they would scroll across the screen. It was a great time killer reading all the texts and so the concert seemed to start pretty fast, even though we stood there for about another 45 minutes. (I honestly have to write to Rocket Dog, as this is the second concert I have stood through with their shoes on and this time it was 9 hours!)

The concert started at 9:00pm with Sonata Arctica, another Finnish band. Kevin had played a few of their songs for me before we came, so I had heard them, but I didn't know their music very well. They were great! Apparently though, as the opening act, they didn't rate a spot light so I never really saw what the lead singer looked like, as he stood in front of the stage lights most of the time. The lead singer is very energetic and has great voice quality! He had some power behind those notes he was singing! They played for about 45 minutes and then they were off. Not enough time for them. We wanted to hear more. (YouTube Video Links: Don't Say a Word & Paid in Full)

During the set change Kevin had a funny conversation with a guy who was trying to convince Kevin that he was a bigger Nightwish fan and so we should let him stand in front of us. (He looked a bit like Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley, only with a mowhawk.) First he said he was shorter than me and so we should let him go in front, then he tried see what CD Nightwish had released when we started listening to them. Dude, if you wanted to stand in front of me, you should have been in this spot before me. He tried this ploy out on a couple of other people around us before he gave up and just stood where he was.

At 10:30pm the lights went dark and the crowd went wild! Nightwish came out and even though we had seen posts on blogs about earlier concerts, it was still weird to see Anette with blond hair! She looked great, but different! The concert was great! The sound was great! They have really been putting their own style into things! Marco is actually a classically trained guitarist, so it was nice when he was playing "The Islander" that he added in some great extra riffs to the song! (And, this time, Anette was wearing the tiara again! Cool! Her part in that song doesn't seem right without it.) Jukka was fantastic as usual. With our vantage point we got to see more of him than we have at any other show! The same thing with Tuomas. We were able to see him better than before. We could see his fingers moving as he played the keyboards. It was great! And Empuu was his amazing self! His solos are so impressive!

They started with "Bye, Bye Beautiful" and ended with "Wish I Had An Angel" as they have through all phases of this tour. This series of concerts was actually billed as the North American Tour - The Final Chapter, as they are finishing up their Dark Passion Play tour and heading back to Europe and then to the studio. They won't be back in America in 2009. (:( Sniff!) Where are we going to get our Nightwish fixes now? They sang several songs off the Dark Passion Play CD - Amaranth, The Islander, The Poet and the Pendulum, Whoever Brings The Night, Sahara and 7 Days To The Wolves - and then they also sang The Siren, Dead To The World, Wishmaster, Higher Than Hope and Come Cover Me (this is a really old one that I didn't even remember hearing before!).

We talked about the difference between the three shows we have seen. Back in November Anette had just started and so the songs all sounded very much like they do on the albums. The band was tight and it was mostly the new music. In Vegas Anette had learned more of the older songs and so there was a lot more variety to the set list. This time they are more comfortable and were putting their own spin and sound into the songs we all know and love.

After the show was over (at midnight) we went out to where the buses were parked to see if we could see the band. We weren't able to get VIP tickets this time, and I had brought the photo of me with Jukka and Marco from Las Vegas and I was hoping to get it signed. We stood there and talked some more with the guys from SLO that we had been in line with earlier. One of them had actually got a copy of the set list off the sound board and was going to try to get it signed.

We didn't have to wait long and Jukka come out! I got right up there and he signed my photo first! I said again how great a drummer we think he is. He said thanks and then I backed up. Kevin said, didn't you want a picture with him? Arg! People were really packing in, so I couldn't get back up there. Then Marco came out! When I held out the photo for him to sign he looked at it for a minute as if he was trying to figure out where it was taken. He said, "I look sober!" He signed it and I got another picture with him , and this time he made sure he didn't look sober! :) I was very glad to have been able to have my photo signed! By this time I was able to get back in to where Jukka was and I got another picture with him as well. Then Tuomas came out and I was able to get a photo with him as well! I shook his hand and told him how much we appreciate his music. We waited until 1:30am but Empuu and Anette never came out, so we got in the van to drive to Jer and Renee's house where we were going to crash for what little of the night was left!

This has been a fun adventure this year heading off to here and there to see this band that we have grown to like so much! It has been neat to see the crowds growing at each show (and the prices of tickets going up with each show) and seeing that Nightwish's fan base is really growing here in the US! Hopefully they will get that new album done soon and be back to the US as early as possible in 2010. Because, when they do get here, you know where we will be!

See all the Nightwish at the Wiltern pics HERE.

Memorial Day weekend family vacation

This weekend we had a great time as a family, both separately and together. Friday, after the girls got out of school, we got on the road and drove to Mesquite to stay with the Vogels (Kevin's sister). It took us about nine hours to drive out there. On the way we saw trains, rain, stars (Katie calls them stars, they are really wind machines), snow on the mountains above Tehachapi, motorcycles, and all kinds of other fun stuff. The weather was cool this week. Just like in Kerman, it had been unseasonably hot the week before an then had cooled off considerably! It was great weather!!!

We stopped in Barstow for dinner. We laughed as we were leaving, because the train that we passed going through the tunnels near Tehachapi passed us in the parking lot in Barstow.

On Saturday morning Kevin and I kissed our children good-bye and left for Las Vegas. We first went to North Las Vegas and met with my sister, Candace, aka Sister Marshall, and took her and her companion, Sister Jones, to lunch. We went to Red Robin and had a long lunch so that we could catch up and get to know each other better. While Candace and Sister Jones were in the bathroom, I called Corissa on her cell phone and found out she is having a girl so that I could tell Candace. We also took a photo together on my phone and sent it as a picture message to my dad.

From there we did a little geocaching and then checked into the hotel and got ready for the concert. (Read the previous post for the concert info.)

Sunday morning we were awakened at 5:15am by a tour bus starting up and revving it's engines for about an hour. Arg! We were really hoping for more than four hours of sleep. We did get a little bit more, but not much. We got some breakfast at the hotel and then checked out and did some geocaching around Las Vegas and on the way back to Mesquite. We saw a few caches that we decided to wait for the next day when we had the girls with us. We found twenty though, so we did well.

We got back to Mesquite and our kids were running around with their cousins, barely noticing that we had returned. The next morning they we not overly thrilled to hear that we were leaving. Even the promise that they would see their cousins again in a few weeks when Rebecca is baptized was not much of a consolation. We are glad that they all get along together so well! We took some pictures (without a whole lot of cooperation on the part of the kids) and then we were off.

We drove back down to North Las Vegas to see Candace for a little while and the girls could meet her. We were glad we had the chance to visit with her! It had been eleven years since I last saw her.

We did a lot of caching in Las Vegas with the girls, taking them to the caches that we knew that they would like. Through several of the caches we learned a lot about the history of the area. We love virtual caches! We went to the Natural History Museum and saw the huge aluminum dinosaur. We went to the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort and looked at all the historical exhibits. We went by the Neon Graveyard and looked at all the old neon signs from all over Las Vegas that are waiting for the proposed Neon Museum to be built. We drove down the Strip and saw all the sights of Las Vegas.

We also took them to the Mandalay Bay casino to show them where the concert was and where we took the photos, etc. We found the last cache in Las Vegas at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, had dinner and hit the road for Kerman. It was 4:30pm, which was MUCH later than we had planned on leaving, so we figured we would not have time to stop for any caches. We were going along pretty well (there is usually a huge amount of traffic returning from Las Vegas after the Memorial Day weekend! I-15 is usually a parking lot!), until we got to Primm, which is right on the state border. There was an accident in California and it had backed traffic up all the way into Nevada, so we pulled off in Primm and did a few fun caches. Our first earth cache and another one that was right on the fence line and we took a picture of the girls with one foot in Nevada and the other foot in California.

By 6:30pm we were back on the road and we did okay until we got to Baker. We stopped there for an hour and then we inched forward until we got to the Ag Inspection Station and then after that it was fairly clear all the way through. Although by then we were so far behind that we didn't get home until after 3:00am!

So lots of family, lots of geocaching (30 total!) and lots of fun, but not a lot of sleep!