Seafood, Nana & Al, and Mammoth Lakes

In early May, Ryan's sister Helena helped open a restaurant on the West Side called Catch & Release.  It's a super-fancy seafood place that is as family-friendly as you can get in that part of town.  We got a sitter for the little ones and took Connor and Elise to the friends and family dinner.  I was so impressed with them.  Not only did they behave fairly well, they both willingly tried half-shell oysters for the first time!  All the food was pretty amazing.
   

Raw Oysters

Later that week, Ryan's grandparents came to visit.  Nana was recovering from a reaction to some medication, so she couldn't hike around much, but we still had a great time.  We watched Evan play T-ball, visited the Griffith Observatory (while Elise was at a play rehearsal,) and watched Elise's play, "Milkshakes and Motorcycles."
   

We found a bird nest in our light outside.

  

Griffith Observatory

   

  

After the Show

  
The last day Nana and Al were here was Elise's birthday, and a Sunday.  She woke up with a sore throat and fever, so I took her to the nearest Minute Clinic.  Her first birthday gift was a positive strep test!  Poor girl stayed home from church and watched movies.  Some ibuprofen perked her up around dinner time, so she was able to open gifts and eat her awesome cake.  She got a real camera, an ipod nano, and some clothes - Elise has never been too interested in toy stuff.
     

    

   
During Elise's Girl Scout meeting that Tuesday, Corinne was being a little hooligan, so I had to get a picture.  
     

One afternoon I was checking our tomato boxes when I found what looked like a flat cauliflower in the potting soil next to the sprinkler.  Of course, I poked it with a stick, then went online to figure out what it was.  I don't know who named this organism, but it is called "Dog Vomit Slime Mold."  I felt very lucky to have experienced such a thing.  Then I threw it down the hill with a shovel.
   

In mid-May we left for our vacation to Mammoth Lakes.  We "won" a week-long stay at a condo at last year's Boy Scout auction.  We didn't realize that the middle of May, in Mammoth, is still winter.  We had planned to do hiking and bike-rides, fishing, and swimming.  So, we still did these things, we just did them with coats on (or in very heated pools.)  On our first day, we walked around the tufa formations of Mono Lake, then hiked to the top of a crater nearby.  It started to snow at the beginning of the hike - big, fluffy, decorative snowflakes.  The kids were freaked out, but quickly realized that snow wouldn't hurt them, and we had an amazing afternoon.
    

  

Mono Lake has lots of brine shrimp.

Tufa Formations

Desert Peach.  This was blooming everywhere we went.

Snowflakes filled the air, but they didn't stick.

  
On our second day, we wanted to drive down to (warmer) Bishop and go fishing, but we started by visiting a fish hatchery.  Corinne loved throwing fish food into the ponds.  Then we found a spot along the Owens river and tried to catch something.  We had no luck, but a friendly couple let Connor reel in a trout they had hooked.  They said we could keep it - it was more exciting for us than for them.
     

     

After fishing, we visited the Laws Railroad Museum.  It was filled with restored old trains, buildings, and all kinds of artifacts from the late 1800's to early 1900's.

    

  

  

 

Little Princess Connor

On Sunday, the Yosemite hotline said that the Tioga Pass to Tuolumne Meadows was open.  We hurried up, since another snowstorm was expected that afternoon.  We stopped at the overlook to Half Dome (you can barely see it in the distance,) and played near a wooded lake (Tioga Lake?)  Then I forced my family to go on a muddy hike across the meadows.  Snow was falling, again, and there was almost nobody out there - it was breathtaking.  Don't worry, we made it to the waterfall and back long before any serious storms started up.  When we got back to the condo, we cooked the trout, and the kids played outside collecting (and eating) hailstones. 
      

Half Dome?

 

  

 

"Waterfall"

    

See the snow falling?

  

Corinne loved this "chicken."

Eating Hailstones

  
On Monday, Ryan took Connor on a mountain bike ride, so I passed the time by visiting this giant crack in the ground with the other kids.  We were completely alone in the woods, which was a little creepy, but also very peaceful.  After we picked up the boys, we drove past Horseshoe Lake, basically just to see why there were little "poison" signs on the map there.  Large notices warned us not to camp, or lie face down in any depressions or snowdrifts.  We weren't planning on doing those things, so we explored and learned about the volcanic CO2 that had been oozing out of the ground and killing trees for the past two decades.  
  

Earthquake Fault Trail

 

    

 

  
On our last day, we stocked up on bread from Schat's bakery and briefly tried to go fishing again.  The kids got bored and built a dam in a little stream near the main river.  They got totally muddy, but loved it.  On the way home, we took a significant detour and drove up to the Mt. Whitney Portal campground.  I forgot to get any pictures of that, but we hung out for a few minutes and tried to figure out what kind of person would try to hike that thing.  We need to camp there sometime, though, it was beautiful.