Birds and More Birds

So it turns out that Summer has a sick infatuation with birds. Every vacation she takes a picture of at least one variety of bird. Here are a collection of them from last Summer. You know there really isn't such thing as a cute or good-looking bird most of them just look evil or suspicious like they want to poop on you.

This pelican's picture was taken at the beach just before it scooped up one of the kids to feed to it's chicks. Not a good looking bird, not at all........

This bird over on the right is a Disneyland bird, so we are not actually sure if it's an actual, real-live bird. When it started singing Zippedty -Doo-Da we were even more confused, maybe at Disneyland they train their birds to sing Disney tunes.

Finally, the bird at the bottom is a rat with wings we found at Lower Calf Creek falls. Doesn't it look suspicious and a bit angry?

Uncle Charles

Summer's Uncle Charles passed away around Christmas time. I found some photos kicking around when I was working on another project. The little one in the first picture is Declan.

Then these are up at Grandpa Fowle's cabin:

Jedi Master

Jackson went through rigorous Jedi training at Disneyland. Don't let the polo shirt and sandals fool you the force is strong in this one.

OK, there are a couple of odd things about this picture.

1. The Canada shirt to Jackson's right has a bunch of beavers playing golf. Does Canada distribute any shirts that don't have an animal mascot? I thought their mascot was a moose, turns out its a beaver.

2. There are a creepy set of eyes under Jackson's right armpit. Weird huh?

3. The guy behind in the black shirt, enough said..

Fighting Darth Maul...

The Beach

We stopped at the Beach for the younger boys this was also a first. I'm still finding sand in obscure, hard to reach places.

We told the kids they could wade in the surf but not to get very wet or dirty ha, ha, ha..

Pleasant Creek Petroglyphs

I took the family on a hike this year we hadn't been on before to see a petroglyph panel on Pleasant Creek in Capitol Reef National Park. This was courageous on the familys part as last year I took them on a hike that turned into something similar to the Donner Party. Well there wasn't any of that cannibalism stuff we had plenty to eat, it was more like dehydration, hallucinations, ants hauling off the smallest children and more than a little crying. The petroglyphs were quite cool and anytime I run across pictographs and petroglyphs that include hand prints it really adds a personal element to them.

Here is some bear prints and what looks like a rare spotted aardvark.

Las Vegas

On the way to Disneyland we stayed the night in Vegas. For the first time ever I came out positive in the casinos of course it doesn't make much difference if your wife loses big. We stopped at the Coca Cola shop and ran into this furry feller. Declan was not happy to see a polar bear inside of the store and wondered why the rest of us wanted to take a picture with him. At least the bear wasn't standing on his foot.

Disneyland

This year we all got to go to Disneyland and stay at the Disney Hotel. For the kids this was their first trip and for all of us it was the first time at the Disney Hotel. We had a lot of fun and nobody wanted to come home.

On a side not the gates to hell might just look like this (we got stranded in this bad boy for about 30 minutes):

The shrub shaped like a Bison was a hit.