Camping at Gold Lakes, CA

We spent the week camping up in the beautiful mountains of California. Below are some pictures of our hikes, camp and creatures we saw! We had moments of wondering why we took 2 two-in-a-half year old twins camping! What were we thinking! But over all it was a blast! And we had a great time!

Nathan & Daniel having a snack after one of our MANY hikes!

Ryan, Comptyn, Bryce & Nathan loved the stepping stones over this creek near out campsite!




Ryan & Bryce kept trying to sneak out these big
pine cones that were all over the national forest we were in.


The creek on one of our hikes.


Of course the kids had to stop and throw rocks in it!


Sammy chewing someone out about something!


Comptyn in one of his many poses!












Big Bear Lake. Water was incredibly clear and beautiful! Bryce got a little nervous the closer we got. He thought we were going to see Big Bears!


Fun bridge we had to cross to get the Big Bear Lake.


Sammy fell in LOVE with all the wild flowers. Notice the dirt and 'ouchies' on his fingers!















What is camping without a squirt gun fight! Of course we only had enough guns for everyone but dad!


We saw a marmot across the way from our camp site. We also saw new birds and a bobcat ran across the road on our drive up to one of our hikes!



Lucky Daniel could just fall asleep where ever! We were exhausted every night!

We have a kidney!

In fact, we have 2! We had 5 AMAZING people who volunteered to be tested. 2 passed the initial screening. Of those 2 BOTH were matches! One scored slightly higher as a better match for Daniel, so we are starting with her. Her name is Kelle. (Jimmy is our other donor.) Anyhow, both of them are incredible in their willingness to help a complete stranger! We did not know either of them before all this started! Anyhow, Kelle has a few tests to have done on her blood and an evaluation at Stanford and hopefully things will be OK. We are blessed to have a 'back up' if something happens with Kelle's work up. Anyhow, the transplant will happen soon! When? We don't know exactly yet. We have to wait for Kelle's things and then Daniel needs to get his Echocardiogram done. Then we wait for nephrology to say....GO! Which, at our appointment last month they said they wnat to have it done by Sept 1st if we could. So I think they'll get us in there as soon as everything is ready! We are just amazed at the miracles we've seen and been able to participate in throughout this whole process. We are grateful to those of you who have prayed and fasted on Daniel's behalf. Please know that we know that they are been heard and answered! We avoided at least 3 surgeries that I can think of off the top of my head and many other 'little' witnesses along the way. Thank you!

Yet another Brycism!

Our family has been reading from the Book of Mormon. We are hoping to finish by the time the twins graduate from High School in 15 years! Anyhow, we are in 1 Nephi 12 when Nephi is being shown the vision his father, Lehi, saw. The angel showing Nephi the dream will say, "Look" and then Nephi says, "And I beheld...." and then he would tell what he saw. It is repeated over and over thru out this vision. So the other day I was telling Bryce he needed to get dressed and his clothes were on the back of the couch. I kept saying, "Bryce here are your clothes, time to get dressed." (He was watching TV.) So I finally said, "Bryce, Look!" Without even moving he said, "MOM. I beheld!"