Crystal Cave

On Saturday, my dad, Chris and I drove deep into the Sequoia National Park to see Crystal Cave for the first time. Once we arrived to the parking lot of the cave we had to walk down a half mile to the cave entrance. The walk down is equivalent to 30 flights of stairs...it was steep to say the least. Near the entrance was a gorgeous waterfall worth the walk itself. At the cave entrance we put on our sweatshirts (it is 50 degrees in the cave) , grabbed a flash light and headed in with our tour group of about 50 people.

The cave was very dark and lit up only by flash lights. When looking around the colors were very muted and only when taking photos did I realize the rock was different colors. The pictures do not do that cave justice - it was amazing to walk into a huge room only lit up by about 25 flash lights and see a cave like this for the first time. We saw stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, columns, curtains and more.

Here is a link to the rest of the photos from the cave - enjoy!

(more information about Crystal Cave and Sequoia National Park can be found here)

P.S.
The "newlyweds" are doing well and look forward to passing the title onto Hillary and Daniel!

Cherries and Berries

A photo album by Smilebox

Sarah gets her Masters in Education

Sarah got her Masters in Education last Sunday in Sacramento. She was so excited because she found out when she got there that she did indeed get the gold tassel signifying honors. She had only one B+ - the rest A's. It was a very well deserved tassel! We are so proud of her and her accomplishment!

Visitors: The Queen Was Not Pleased

A friend brought over two sister kittens she is fostering for the humane society. Misha was not pleased and sat above the frig, watching, with her "Yoda Ears" (that what we call her look when she puts her ears back). As you can see, they were very cute and fun to watch. Misha inspected all the places they'd been after they left and has recovered from the visit nicely.

Remember This?

I was reminding Ruth Ann about the Fourth of July candles that Alli (and Amelia?) made one summer. I still pull mine out every year. Julia, can you or the girls remind us of the details of that business venture? I recall it was pretty successful, right? The date's hard to read in the picture: it's 6/29/94.

Julia's New Neckware! !

Julia is doing well after surgery! I thought you would all like to see that for yourself like I did today. Her neck brace is lovely...covers the old Abraham chin even without Franny's lovely pose (pic 2). She wasn't crazy about the flat hair (pic 3) but I wanted to show how high it goes in back. She'll have to live with the hair for a while becasue she can't shower for 7 to 9 days. (Sorry Julia, I couldn't remember the exact number of days.) Pic 4 shows her "wiring." She has four electrodes on her back that are wired to the little black box she is holding. She was definitely lower energy than she usually is but she said the whole surgery experience was better than she had expected. Paul is off work this week taking care of her: changing padding on the neck brace daily, fixing meals, tieing her shoes, etc. and Amelia is coming back Wednesday. It was good to see she's doing so well.

Ramp Revamp

Jim Augustus came for another visit and this time he revised the ramp that John had made two years ago. The ramp was supposed to be temporary but I got used to not going up and down the steps so it's stayed all this time...in its temporary state. I've included a picture of the ramp right after John constructed it and Jim, Bob and Misha trying out the updated version. You can see it's all dressed up now. I decided to remove the handrail which wasn't used much and instead we put a bumper on that side to guide the wheelchair and keep it on the ramp. The step matches the steps already there and was a good way to finish off the side.