Birthday Wishes

This weekend we celebrated Matt's birthday.  Because he had to work on his birthday we decided to celebrate the day before.  We had plans to head to the lake for the day, but as mother nature has done to us a lot this summer...she had other plans.  We woke to a gloomy sky and rain in the forecast for the lake.  So Matt decide he wanted to head over to California for a day hike.  We loaded up our packs, and headed out.

The hike Matt chose was one which was rated an easy 3 mile hike (6 miles round trip) from Big Meadow to Round Lake.

I was a little hesitant as we arrived because their were blue skies everywhere...except the direction we were going to hike.  We started out on the trail hoping we were heading in the right direction.

By the time we reached Big Meadow (which really rang true to it's name, it should have been called Huge Meadow) we were deciding if we were totally out of shape, or if someone rated this hike "easy" for laughs.  This was the most pleasant part of the hike...

A little over an hour into the hike our little trickles of rain we had been ignoring had turned into a downpour with LOUD thunder and lightening.  We had just reached what looked like a peak that would be going downhill but decided to head back before we got caught in a flash flood. 

We turned around and hiked about 15 minutes back down.  I really felt like we were probably almost there so, I convinced Matt that we should go back as it looked like the rain was almost done and the sun was coming out.  I mean we were already soaked anyway, so why not.  Well, we were NOT almost there.   The downhill turned into uphill and we hiked for a good 45 minutes more before FINALLY reaching the lake.  The pictures we saw of this lake online were well let's say more appealing.  It was pretty green.

We really only sat for about 5 minutes when those black clouds seemed to backtrack and we were about to get a double dose of rain.  They were moving fast, and we decided we better move fast too.

We kept a good pace to keep ahead of the storm going back and even stopped to have some fun here and there.  Matt proving that he will never grow up, kept us laughing.  (Apparently this is a well traveled horse trail).

Sadi took time to pick all the flowers she could to make a wildflower bouquet, even though she was told to leave them in the wild.

We got home and Matt barbecued fish for dinner (his birthday request).  The kids were not fans of this and were really hoping for pizza so they had pizza bites while we enjoyed mahi mahi.  We built a fire out back and Matt opened his birthday cards.

He didn't want cake this year and so we bought him some of his favorite ice cream and sang to him. 

The kids worked on a new version of Happy Birthday that went something like this "Happy Birthday to you, your not 42!".  He really enjoyed that :)