The Hike

Thad and the scouts made it home safe and sound on Saturday. After 6 days, and 56 miles of hiking, they made it from Mammoth to Yosemite with only minor trauma. They were swarmed by mosquitos, blistered feat, and Sunday all of their noses were pealing from sunburns, but other than that, all is well. Here are some pictures Thad took on the hike. He took several hundred. Here is a shot at the church building before they left. Apparently they dubbed themselves "the fellowship of the Half Dome" and gave each other names from the movie.

Surprisingly there is only one bear story from the trip, and of course it was Thads. He went fishing just before dinner to get a "treat" for the boys and a man and his little girl came up to the river and asked if they could watch him fish. I guess they'd never seen fly fishing. He'd already caught a few fish and had them in a bag in his vest, so when he caught the next one he backed over out of the river by his audience.
The guy said, "I can't believe you didn't run."
Thad: "Run? why?"
Guy: "From that bear"
Thad: "What bear?"
Guy: "It was right behind you, look I took a picture."
and sure enough there is a big bear just watching Thad and the fish in his vest flop around.
Thad: "Why didn't you run? or say something?"
Guy: "Well, I thought if you were okay being that close, we were okay."
Thad: "I didn't see it!"

So Andi's nightly prayers that Daddy and the boys would be protected from the bears were answered. She also started praying for us to be protected while Daddy was gone in a disturbing fashion. I said prayer the first night and she asked me,
"Mom, is Heavenly Father protecting us from bad guys?"
Me: "Yes, He is."
Andi: "What do the bad guys want to do to us?"
Me: "uh, I don't know Andi."
Andi: "Do they want to kill us?"
Me: "Maybe, don't worry about it. We're fine."
So every night she prayed to make sure the bad guys did not come and kill us. Creepy.

We are working on getting Sammy to talk more. He will now say a few more words, but only if you tell him to, or withhold what he wants till he says it. He has started saying Andi(nani), out, drink, nose, toes, moon, tv, sippy, up, and hello. He signs please, and more, but that's about it. He's just a stubborn little beast, and I'm pretty sure when he feels like it he'll start talking like crazy.