Ziplines, chipmunks, and magnets, oh my!

Wow, it’s been a while since my last post.  Things have been busy.  We went on a camping trip with family, did some major deep cleaning in our garage, and have been preparing for school to start (in 13 days!).  Okay, so the camping trip.  It was very cool to be all together with my sister, brother-in-law, my awesome nieces, and my folks.  My sister’s family and my family had campsites next to each other and my folks were in an RV not far away.  We were camping at Mammoth Lakes and we took the boys fishing and to Mammoth Mountain where Jack and my nieces rode a kid-sized zipline.  It was a bit small for the girls but Jack loved it.  Poor Callen was super excited to try it but when he got up the ladder and on the platform he got really scared and cried until we could get him down.  No amount of "just like Diego" talk was going to work, so Jack got to do the zipline 4 times.

After that we rode the gondola up to the top of the mountain, and even in late July, we got to play in some snow up there.  In the summer, the ski runs are open up to mountain bikers who can take the gondola up with their bikes and ride down.  I brought my bike camping with us and was thinking about doing it but as we rode up and down the mountain on the gondola and watched people ride the trails down, it very quickly became obvious that I had no business riding on the mountain.  I would have been way out on my league.  Later that night, I took my bike out for a ride.  I ended up on a paved bike trail and after the extreme coolness I had seen on the mountain earlier that day, I couldn’t help but feel lame out there on my bike.  The views were incredible but there were so many little chipmunks running across the path that I could hardly look up to see my surroundings.  I was certain I would hit one, crash into something, and limp back to camp crying about how I killed a cute little chipmunk.  This scenario played over and over in my head until I got off the path.  Maybe I would have been better off going down the mountain.  At least then if I got hurt, it would have been doing something cool.  Overall the camping trip was a lot of fun.  My sister brought along some magnets that are used to clean up construction sites.  My boys were dragging those things all over picking up bottle caps and other old, dirty “treasures”.  I also bought a pack of large paperclips and buried them around the campsite.  Everyone was happy, enjoying some quiet time while they pulled those magnets all over the place.  Ah, it was lovely.  I’ll be putting those magnets on MY Christmas list this year.