Mountain Ranch

Sorry that I have written only a couple of posts this entire summer! It's been a bit crazy, and any spare minute I get, I'm trying to play catch-up in cleaning my house.

Anyways, I'm finally getting around to posting about our trip out to Mt. Shasta last month!

Bryant's sister Chantel is home from her mission in the Phillipines! We decided to go out to California to be there at the airport when she arrived. We decided to make an entire vacation out of it as one last hurrah of the summer.

I had never been to Bryant's Grandma's house out in Mountain Ranch, between Lake Tahoe and San Andreas, and every year we talk about going to visit, but we never can make it happen. This year, we decided to devote the first few days of our vacation to visiting her!

 

 The kids were in absolute heaven! Mostly because of Grandma's dog Penny, and her cat Q-tip. They also liked playing in the dog kennel!

 

Bryant's grandpa had a plane and this was the hangar/garage/workshop. We took a 4-wheeler ride around the property and up the runway. I'm so bummed that I don't have photos from that drive! I had left my phone at the house and Bryant's had died. But those manzanita bushes! Beautiful!

 

We spent a lot of time outside, fishing, walking, playing with the animals, and riding in the go-cart!

 

And grilling! We ate a lot of food from grandma's garden.

 

Deagan is my animal lover. He was giving Penny kisses on her nose, and then carrying Q-tip everywhere. Anytime I looked over at him, he was marching around with a none-too-happy kitty in his arms. Savannah also loved the animals. One day, she spent almost the entire afternoon in the office playing and watching movies on the ipad with the cat. She came out for lunch, and took her sandwich back into the room. She also loved playing with the toys for the cat. It ALMOST made me want to get a cat for her. Almost.

 

There were TONS of hummingbirds! I loved doing the dishes after dinner because I was able to watch them all drink out of the feeder out the kitchen window.

A lot of my photos from grandma's are on Bryant's phone, so those will be included in the next post. I didn't take a ton of photos because I didn't have very good cell service and zero internet so my phone spent most of the weekend turned off. It was actually really nice. When we got to Sacramento and got cell and internet back, I was surprised by how much I actually didn't miss it. 

It was a very relaxing few days. I spent a lot of time reading, playing with my kids, and we helped Donna out with a few projects around the house. On our 2nd to last day, Deagan woke up sick and had thrown up all over his Pack and Play, then again all over the decorative couch in our room. He was fine by that afternoon, but it's always sad to see your kids sick. Bryant Savannah and I all had the exact same thing at different times throughout the week too. I got it while driving to Sacramento. I thought it was just car sickness, but it was a whole lot worse than what I normally get. I even had to make Bryant pull over a couple of times.

I regret that we haven't been out to visit Donna sooner. It really is so beautiful out there, and it's nice to unplug from technology for a while. I think we will have to make trips out to see her a whole lot more frequent!