Yesterday my friend was driving home from church with her twin daughters when they were rear-ended by a semi who smashed into then when they were in stopped traffic . Their car burst into flames and all three of them died while the semi proceeded to plow through another 7 cars, one of which was driven by another friend. The debris field stretched for almost a mile.

I am devastated. I can’t stop crying. I’m writing here because I think it’s only read by family at this point and i just have to get this out but I don’t want to post anything on social media. My heart is absolutely breaking—I just saw her ten minutes before. She was wearing a green shirt and her hair looked super cute and she was gently rocking one of her babies. She gave the opening prayer in church and asked for all of us to remember that we were beloved children of God and to treat others the same.

Her babies slept in my pack and play. We talked in my living room about adjusting to motherhood and sleep schedules and work-life balance. I watched as she went through pregnancy and the newborn stage and held her babies as they learned to sit and crawl and held their fingers as they started to walk. She was a talented graphic designer whose Instagram feed was peppered with really cool visuals she’d seen around her neighborhood—I told her once that it reminded me to actually look around me and appreciate random beauty. She was quiet and calm and I never once saw her flustered by twins as her first babies—I knew she was tired and worn out but she loved them so so much.

Her brother died two months ago. Her husband’s birthday was on Saturday. People were still wishing him happy birthday on Facebook even as the news stories were flooding out.

I cannot wrap my mind around this. I cannot believe that someone who was so genuinely wonderful and that I loved and admired is just gone. I can’t believe that her husband lost his entire family in a split second.

Visiting the Morales Family

On our way home from the Rockies, we stopped off for a couple of days to see our dear dear friends Jason and Melanie and their four sweet kids! Oh man we love this family SO much! You know those people that you can go without seeing for a couple years and then when you finally see them you just talk and talk and talk nonstop and it's like you picked up exactly where you left off? Love it. 

I don't know who took this picture, but it describes what Melanie and I did for those couple of days--talked nonstop trying to pack everything in!


And we came closer to thinking about getting a cute little pup than we ever have before or since--we love Laney!!

Even if Matthew wasn't quite sure at the beginning, haha. 

We were only there for a couple of days, but man we packed in so much good stuff!!

Adam and Isaac are only a couple of days apart in age--these guys have been buddies for a LONG time! They moved to Indiana right after Adam was born so these little guys grew up together. (We first met Jason and Melanie in our student ward at BYU so we go way back before any of us had kids!)

Jason completely won Matthew's heart. 

We barely saw these boys--they emerged every now and then for food or to play a rousing after-dark game of Capture the Flag! 

Gosh those goodbyes were hard!

It's already been way too long since we've seen them--we were tossing plans around for getting together last year, but that darn pandemic has made it tricky! Hopefully soon!!!!

 

Saint Louis Arch

Going back in time here, but I have a lot of catching up to do! We started our 2018 Rockies trek in the afternoon and hit St. Louis just after sunset. 



As we parked, we saw a horse-drawn carriage pull up and Juliet immediately started hyperventilating. I looked at Neil and Neil looked at me and then we went over to the carriage lady and asked her if she was free. 

And all of Juliet's wildest dreams came true!

We went on a little tour through the part of St. Louis closest to the arch and marvelled at how INSANELY high the water was!! Seriously--most of the way up the steps from the river to the arch were underwater. 

The arch visitor's center was closed by the time we arrived, but we still had so much fun exploring around it and watching the sun fully set. 

And then it was back in the car and onward through the night to the Rockies!

 

Alberta Falls, the Loch, and Sky Pond

This is one of the most popular hikes in RMNP and for good reason!! I cannot possibly underscore how much I loved this hike. 

It starts out with a pretty steep climb up to Alberta Falls, which we had previously hiked with the kids way back in 2013 with baby Nate. 



I remember this hike taking SO long when we hiked it last, and this time we just tromped right up in half an hour or so! And then it was on up to the Loch, with kids still happily tramping along. 



Nathan started to wilt a bit (it was HOT on some of those exposed switchbacks as we headed towards Longs' Peak) and I carried him on my back for a couple miles, but as soon as we got to the snowfields he perked right up again. 

The Loch was SO beautiful and we spent quite awhile hanging out here throwing rocks in the water and things like that. We had debated turning around at this point, but the kids were adamant that they wanted to keep going, so we went onwards and upwards towards the Lake of Glass & Sky Pond. We had talked to the kids for the last couple weeks about this "big hike" (and they were like if we do it all do we get prizes? NB: we eventually paid up in stuffed animals, and please let it be recorded forever and ever that our sweet 14-yr-old requested and was given a stuffed yellow-bellied marmot). 

Once we rounded the end of the loch the crowds very quickly thinned out and basically became nothing. We heard a few rumblings here and there of thunder, so we kept a really close eye on the sky in case we needed to head down again, but thankfully it passed (thunderstorms at elevation are no joke). 

Once we got up into the boulderfield the trail was GONE. Like zero sign of it--the snow was still pretty thick and not enough people had gone that way to mark a clear trail! I had read the guidebook info pretty carefully so I was able to make a good guess at our direction, and after a few false trails (sorry to the groups following up; I was like "why are you trusting us" and then I was like "oh you guys are college students we basically look like grownups to you") we made our way across the snowfield and to the bottom of the waterfall. 

Okay. So. This does not look nearly as scary in the picture as it did in real life. The trail description I'd read talked about "scrambling up the rocks; there may be some spring runoff" and neglected to say "FULL ON WATERFALL." I mean, it's called Timberline Falls so...I guess it's implied? If you've been there? In any case, we got to this point and two of our kids were like AWESOME SEE YA and one was sound asleep in his baby pack and never woke up through the whole thing (Matty) and one was too small to care (Nate) and one was crying and refused to open his eyes (Isaac) and one was crying for us to call the rangers for a helicopter lift (Jules). 

So this is what we did: I scrambled up the falls after Abigail and Luke (which was legit so amazing; you can't get up any way other than getting totally soaked with full body contact searching for finger and toeholds up the falls) while Neil waited with the other kids, then I went down and Neil went up. 

From left to right, here's Neil and Abigail (skylined) and then Luke on the right slightly hidden in the rocks. The people at the base of the falls were debating whether they could make it up. 

Here's the view from the top looking down--can you see the Loch in the distance? 

And here's Abigail and Luke at the Lake of Glass. We decided not to go on to Sky Pond since the other kids were waiting down below. I snapped this picture of them, then told them to hang tight on the rock while I went down and sent Neil up. 

While we waited for Neil to come down with the other two, I pumped water to refill everyone's waterbottles from Timberline Falls, reassured Juliet and Isaac that we were not going to die, oriented Matthew to the world (he was super confused as to how he woke up on top of a mountain) aaaaaand then realized that we had come across a literal ice bridge just before the falls and became COMPLETELY terrified about navigating back down it with all the kids. Seriously...I don't think I have ever been as scared in my life as I was going back down over that and praying like crazy that nobody would die. There was no way to have seen it on our approach and it only became visible on the descent. 

We bought trekking poles as soon we we got home from this trip, btw. 

Going back down the snowfield was pretty terrifying and very exhausting--we just were not prepared gear-wise! I'm really grateful that we came down just fine and didn't become a cautionary tale. 

Neil was so relieved when we got to the bottom!

When we got back to the Loch, there was no climbing around or rock-throwing--we were all exhausted! Neil fell asleep, IIRC, and the kids just laid there for awhile. Matthew, who had been happily riding on Neil's back the whole time, had a great time climbing over all of us. 

Most of the way down we talked about the hike and how it was so amazing and we couldn't believe we'd done it. It was pretty terrifying at times but it was also INCREDIBLY euphoric and adrenaline-pumping. As I type this I'm thinking both "oh my gosh, I can't believe we didn't lose anyone on that" AND "holy cow can't wait to do it again that was so amazing." It's definitely in family lore as one of our very best days--the conversations on that hike were just SO good (like when Neil and I pretended for like 3 miles to be interested in the plot of every single episode of "Miraculous" that the kids recounted in excruciating detail so that they wouldn't think about their feet hurting). 

And then we went into Estes Park and ordered the most insanely overpriced but crazy delicious Chinese food I've ever had. Like we just kept ordering and ordering because we were SO hungry--it was such a fun meal.

I probably won't make a separate post sooooooo here is the next day when we were all tired so we drove the Trail Ridge Road, hiked to the top, scoped out the stuffed animals in the visitor's center, went into town to check out their stuffed animals, bought 4 half-gallons of ice-cream and an ice-cream scoop and went crazy eating massive amounts of ice cream in the park...it was another really fun day. 

Also please note: Abs and Juliet the first time we went to the Rockies, including a climb on this same trail.