We have just had THE most LOVELY few days away as a family in Yosemite! The FIRST Gilchrist family holiday!!! The sun was shining, the scenery was breath-taking and (the only down-side), the mosquitos were biting! (I counted 55 bites this morning and Ed had over 30 just below the knee! Yikes!). Thankfully, the bears weren't around to try...

Daniel is now hardly coughing at all. He has fought off his first cold admirably - AND, because he was slightly under the weather, he was sleepier than usual, meaning he was perfectly content to be snuggled close to his Daddy in our 'Ergo carrier' for most of the day while we enjoyed the awesome scenery of Yosemite! It could not have worked out better - if he'd been his usual, perky self, we would not have been able to do half the walks we were able to do AND it means his immune system has had a bit of a work out - The Lord knows better than we do what we need! We just need to learn to trust!

We travelled up late on Thursday and arrived after dark. Friday morning we had a lazy morning and then headed into the Yosemite valley for a delicious lunch at the famous Ahwahnee hotel, followed by a short walk up to see the lower Yosemite falls... an easy day to start us off...

On Saturday, we enjoyed a lovely lie-in and then headed into the valley again for a 10 mile walk around the Yosemite valley. The sheer cliffs rising vertically all around, the cascading waterfalls, the wide meandering rivers and the lush green meadows were an absolute treat to see. The only significant bummer was that the mosquitos were enjoying the scenery too and obviously had not fed in quite some time! The Gilchrists provided them with breakfast, lunch and dinner (thankfully, they did not seem interested in eating Daniel - a mystery, since he's clearly the tastiest of the 3 of us!). There are some pretty fat mozzis in the Yosemite valley right now! We ended the day in the hot tub at our accommodation while Daniel had a nap - SUCH a treat to ease aching muscles!

On Sunday, we caught the early bus up to Glacier point and from there (at an altitude of 8000ft) we were able to look down on the valley and all the magnificent rock formations... we then spent the day hiking down into the valley - an 8.5 mile trek. Hot, hard but TOTALLY worth it! The scenery was absolutely breath-taking. As we passed other walkers, people kept exclaiming "it's a baby!" - they couldn't believe that we had been able to bring Daniel with us all that way - but he was as good as gold. He only cried when he got hungry - and then we stopped and found a shady spot for a breast-feed. For the rest of the time, he mostly slept or looked around, taking everything in from the safety of his pouch next to Daddy's chest - baby bliss! It was a magical day.

When we reached the valley, we realised that the rest of the world had come to Yosemite (it was the July 4th weekend!) and decided that travelling back today (which is what we had planned) would be horrific. So we packed up and left at about 9pm. Daniel slept the whole way home. We had a clear run home and we are now enjoying a lazy family day at home - catching up on the Wimbledon Semis and finals... poor old Murray!