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.

More from the Caymans

Here is one of the iguanas that we saw the other day. . .he was about 4 feet long. . .pretty impressive.
We found a new cave to explore in the middle of the island. Not too many people have been in there. We had to crawl in on our backsides to be able to get in there. It's called Nani's Cave. Really beautiful formations.
Here is a picture taken from the property that is Bob and Brad's. This is the south side of the island.
This is a picture at sunset over Little Cayman taken from the porch of our house. Little Cayman is about 5 miles away.

Cayman Brac

Here we are watching sunset over Little Caymanfrom the patio at the house. The island of Little Cayman is only 5 miles away and it was relatively untouched by the hurricane. Congrats to the owner of the place for not living here fulltime and still being able to get it pretty well fixed up (new roof because the old one blew off in the hurricane in November - Hurricane Paloma was a category 4 plus hurricane that devastated the island. The last time a hurricane did this much damage was in 1932. This time there were no deaths.)
We are enjoying breakfast on the patio. It is pretty hot but the tradewinds are blowing so it is staying comfortable.

Here is one of the homes that was pretty heavily damaged.

James, the iguanas are alive and well after the hurricane. This one was about 4 feet long.

We went snorkeling because we couldn't find a dive shop that was open yet. There were about 5 dive shops on the island before the hurricane, but now there is only one that we could find that even had air for diving.

The Chinese-American Connection

About a week ago, 20 students from a high school in Sichuan Province in China came to visit in Duarte. They were selected to come over here based on their academic performance, low income, and courage in the earthquake last May. Almost all of them had relatives that were lost in the earthquake. The Education Foundation decided to host a cookout at our house for the students. Within 24 hours, we put together a "real American barbeque" with hotdogs and hamburgers and all of the accompanying dishes. We had about 50 people for dinner, including the students, teachers, administrators, and boardmembers. Fortunately, the weather cooperated and it was a beautiful evening. In the first picture, some of the students are shown sitting by the fire pit with foundation boardmembers, Ed and Helen Ferguson.
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After dinner, the students performed some Chinese songs for us. They did a great job!

Some of the students went swimming. They thought it was pretty cool to be able to swim in the winter - in their part of China, that wasn't an option.
Three of the girls wanted to hold baby Elise. They didn't have siblings and they thought this was great fun.

Happy 55th Birthday Brad

Brad celebrated his 55th birthday by having dinner at his favorite restaurant, Old Towne Steak. Bon Appetit and Happy Birthday!

Softball and Space Shuttles and Manatees. . Oh my!

Erin and Helen went to Orlando last week to visit Jeannie and the Academy softball team in their annual Spring Break tournament. In the four years that Jeannie has been playing softball at the Academy, this is their best record during this Orlando tournament. In addition to seeing their team play some great games, we enjoyed some of the other attractions that northern Florida has to offer.


We drove to the Kennedy Space Center, spending the afternoon touring the facilities. This outstanding tour gave us a better understanding of what is involved with each space shuttle launch. The girls were all set to watch (from quite a distance) a shuttle launch on Wednesday evening. However, several hours before the launch, it was scrubbed. The Kennedy Space Center is located in a nature reserve and we loved seeing the alligators, armadillos and great variety of birds. We learned that outside of Alaska, Florida has the greatest population of bald eagles. And we saw an eagle sitting on it's nest.

Erin has always had a love for manatees and we were able to see some in their natural environment. We drove to Blue Spring State Park, just north of Orlando, on the St. John's River. We learned that manatees hang out here during the winter months since the water temperature in Blue Spring is a constant 72 degrees. Manatees cannot survive in water temperatures of 60 degrees of below. They are beautiful animals, very slow moving and docile. But curious when we approached the beach area. This one seemed to have a scar on his back, probably from an accident with a power boat. This was a great area to view these creatures.

(Almost!) Ensign Crump Reporting For Duty

Jeannie just received her billet assignment last night. This is where she will be stationed for the next 2 - 3 years. Jeannie is excited to be calling Portsmouth, VA home, which is very near Norfolk. She will be assigned to the 270ft. USCGC HARRIET LANE. This is a medium endurance cutter (Google USCGC Harriet Lane to find out more).


And as you can tell, Baba is very excited to be moving to the mid-Atlantic area also. She is tired of the New England winters. Smooth sailing for you, Jeannie as you finish the semester and look forward to graduation.

Pictures of Baby Elise Warnick and Big Brother Gavin

Gavin likes to sit and hold his baby sister. . .for about 10 seconds. Then he wants to give her back and play with his trucks.

Baby Elise pretty much spends most of her day eating and sleeping. She is pretty quiet when she is awake but Gavin is the first one to tell us when she's crying. . .like we don't hear her.

Elise likes her swing also, except when Gavin wants to give it a big push.

Welcome Baby Warnick

Megan and Danny welcomed their new baby girl, Thursday, at 2:20 p.m. She weighed in at 8 lbs. 7 oz. Both Megan and the new baby are doing fine.

Great grandparents, Helen and Ed, and grandparents, Margaret and Brad, took dinner down to the hospital for a very hungry Megan.

Gavin was very curious to see his new baby. . .and was most concerned that he couldn't find her hands (they were covered with the long sleeves).

Brad and Great Grandparents, Helen and Ed, look on as the new baby slept soundly.

The Collegiate Peaks

We went to Colorado this past weekend to see Ian. While there, we went to the central part of the state to a town called Salida. From there we went to the Collegiate Peaks Range and snowshoed about 4 miles up the backside of Mt. Yale (one of the fifty two 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado) . The scenery was beautiful and afterward, we went swimming in the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs. What a great way to spend time in Colorado!

When we stopped for lunch, there were a variety of birds around. Brad had a few crumbs in his hands so the birds came for lunch also.