Yosemite Family Reunion

Last weekend was the Ferguson Family reunion up in Yosemite National Park. There were 6 of the original cousins that are the grandchildren of Harriet Ferguson from Yuma, Arizona. Two cousins came from Arizona, two from the Central Valley, one from the LA area and one from San Diego. The first picture is of Gavin feeding chickens at the roadside stand on the way up there.
We did a little bit of hiking up in the park. Yosemite Falls had a lot of water running in it this time of year. Gavin really enjoyed throwing rocks in the Merced River.
Here is a group photo of all of the people that attended the reunion. With Gavin and Elise there, we had four generations represented.
On one of the days, we took the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad down the mountain.
Gavin really enjoyed the train ride through the forests with Megan and Great Grandpa.

Who was Harriet Lane?

Last week, Helen and Dan went to visit Jeannie at the Coast Guard Academy during Easter Break. Several weeks earlier, Jeannie had received her billet assignment for the next 2 years after she graduates. She will be stationed in Portsmouth, VA on the USCGC Harriet Lane. Walking around campus one day, Jeannie noticed that one of the streets was named Harriet Lane. We found out how the street was named. Harriet Lane was the niece of lifelong bachelor President James Buchanan. She acted as 1st Lady of the United States from 1857-1861.
We were also fortunate enough to watch a few of the USCGA Women's Softball games. The team ended the season being ranked 22nd in the nation and winning their first ever New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference regular season title.

Iron Chef Dan

Dan had a Iron Chef competition at work this week with the key ingredient as strawberries. He opted to make this spectacular cheesecake. It turned out amazing! He did a great job. If he keeps up cooking like this I may have to turn all the cooking over to him, or at least the baking.

Happy Easter Gavin

Gavin had two Easter Egg hunts this year. . .one at the ward building where he competed with a bunch of children for the eggs - and came up with only about 5 eggs. He figured out that there was candy inside of the eggs and wanted another Easter Egg hunt.
We granted Gavin his wish so on Sunday afternoon, he had his own egg hunt and came up with all 15 eggs - and erroneously thought he could eat all of the candy that afternoon.

Elise

Elise has been getting to be so much more animated. She spends about an hour every morning kicking and smiling until she gets tired and is ready for a nap. Here are a few pictures of her smiling. Even though she smiles often it is hard to catch it on camera.

Little Cayman

We all flew over to Little Cayman Island today - the roundtrip ticket cost what 5 gallons of milk cost on Cayman Brac. The trip took about 7 minutes as the two islands are separated by only 5 miles of water.
When we landed on this island, where there are only 160 full time residents, we went around the island (which is only 12 miles long and about 1 mile wide) and found a lot of iguanas. They like bananas so we gave them some - this iguana was almost four feet long, and he didn't even have his whole tail (due to combat with other iguanas).

One of the places that we snorkeled (couldn't dive here due to flying) was Point of Sand - there is a reef about a half mile off the south shore and it keeps the water warm inside the reef. There are a lot of interesting creatures in the bay, like octopus and conch. This picture is the "Jump Picture" that Allison always likes all of us to do. And if it looks like there are no people around, it's because there aren't - we were the only people on this 3 mile beach.


Our group picture before we went snorkeling.


This is Owen Island out in the middle of South Hole Sound. We snorkeled out to the island. The water was so warm that we didn't wear our wetsuits.

Visit from Grandma Warnick

Grandma Warnick came to visit us in California for a week. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed her company. Gavin enjoyed showing her all his trucks and asked for her every morning when he woke up. We participated in a 5k race with my mom and brother Evan. Evan and Dan ran the race and the rest of us walked as fast as we could. My mom carried Gavin on her back the whole way! Thanks for visiting us and helping with the kids. We had a great time.