Walks and Aquarium with Toots and Pops

Sunday, December 29 was church and not much else. I have no pictures from that day. Monday Jim worked in the morning but had the afternoon off. We took Tutu and Papa to Copper Creek.

The girls took a break to see what they could see through their binoculars.

We made it down to the bridge at the end, where Tiny had a little snack. 

We debated going back on the other side of the creek, and I wanted to explore. It would have made the hike way longer, though, and we just didn't have time. 

Tuesday morning, I found the biggers reading like this in their room. (I love how Tiny and Wren "read" chapter books.) They almost never use the window seat Jim built, so I had to snap a pic for him.

We did not get out early because of me and mine, but we managed to squeeze in a trip to the Birch Aquarium in the afternoon. It was the last day I could use our annual passes, which I purchased last winter when Mamo and Pod were here and used not once since then. Pod didn't feel the need to visit the aquarium again, so he stayed home and did some work.

Tiny has a serious wandering-off problem, and we had to do a lot of looking for her. Neither of my other children did that. It is not good. Anyway, she disappeared relatively early on, and we found her outside. Once she was located, we enjoyed the view. 

The aquarium had ornament stickers on certain tanks that corresponded to a scavenger hunt for the kids. They had to use clues to identify a certain creature in each ornamented tank and unscramble words, etc. It spiced up the aquarium, so that was fun. 

Outside, Tiny loved the boat bit. 

The biggers liked the bikes and seesaw and were sad to leave. 

The girls wanted to take a pic in the Jaws mouth but refused to look at the camera at the same time.

Wednesday, January 1, Tiny donned some of her Christmas bling and worked on a floor puzzle that JoAnn gave the girls.

We went for a hike on the Santa Margarita River trail. We didn't have time to go all the way to the river crossing we've stopped at in the past but had a nice walk. 

Lunch break.

We stopped briefly for rock throwing.

Not long into the hike, Tiny had to poop. We were going through this rocky section (except this was taken when we were on the way out instead of on the way in):

I told everyone else to go on ahead, and then I dug a little hole by the trail and helped Tiny with her business. I was very annoyed, but she really did amazingly well. I had wipes and a ziplock (or was it a tupperware?) from lunch I could use as a trash receptacle. I had hand sanitizer. It was quite easy, actually. My girls may need to relieve themselves freakishly often, but at least they're really good at going outside. 

That's it for pictures with Toots and Pops. They left early the next morning. We got in some good Vicious Gin before they left, which was very fun. We were so glad they could come!