Hangin' with the Balls.

Today was the last day of "vacation" in between semesters. So, we spent it with Grandma & Grandpa Erdmann and Renty, and Joshua, Jacob, and Jared Ball. Honestly, most of our time was spent with Jared because he is only 4 and was at home with Gma and Gpa and Renty (his 10 month old sister). Here are some videos of our adventures.

This was a common occurrence the entire day.





Jared said he didn't/couldn't walk the entire way...so he ran.


Jared wanted to be pushed but we were tired of pushing him so we stopped. His brothers, Joshua and Jacob were swinging on big kid swings and were going really high. Jared wanted to go high too.

a few pictures from my final show are up on my photo blog
look at them here
or here

another long post about the trip

so before disneyland the family stopped by our place and we played around for the weekend.

nate got a bloody nose

the boys got together and jammed

ems watched

here they are recording a weezer song

dallin recorded it

emily in the car, wearing my hat

dallin looks old in this picture

sunday we drove to vegas.

here we are getting settled into the condo

it looks like we had been here forever but this picture was taken like five mins after we got there

here is valley fire

and ellisha in a rock

matt n dal

mel and rach in the cabbins

so five mins after we get to the cabbins i look over to the side of the hill and i see paul and nat climbin to the top... ridiculous

you probably have to make this big to see them

matt saw them and he started bookin it up there too

next, dallin ran up there too

find dallin

an inspirational nate picture

pictures from inside the rock

matt and mom fit in this tiny hole in the rock

Disneyland trip

Here are some pictures from our impulse trip to Disneyland.

Tradition has it that the Peter Pan ride is always first. Here's Linda and Paul, this picture is so awkward we had to put it up.

This year Emily was finally tall enough to go on just about every ride...including the fast ones like thunder mountain.

If you couldn't tell that shadow is Emily, and everyone is looking back to see her reaction as the ride is about to start.

Check out these videos of the ride...they aren't that good but you can see Emily's different reactions, and everyone else's reactions as they watch her. At the end of the ride she stated, very firmly, "We are not doing that again"

Here's a random video of us on the teacups. Emily asked me to go on them with her, I was stoked. When I asked her if she wanted to spin really fast or just kind of fast she said, "um...just kind of fast."

Emily was a great driver. See for yourself.


This one is super shaky...but it's because Emily kept hitting the track.

If Emily looks worried it's because we just got off Thunder Mountain and now we're about to get on Splash Mountain.

This is us in the process of going down the big drop.

So Tower of Terror got it's name for a good reason. We felt terrorized after all the screamers on the ride. (See video)


Last year when we did this ride Hillary won, but this year I came out victorious. But Hillary did get 50% accuracy and mine was only 23% Guess that means I'm just super fast! I'm pretty sure everyone else beat both of us though...what was Paul's score? haha.

Paul was reunited with his people.

This picture is for Emily. I spotted Cinderella across the water.

If you can't tell, we were going for animals. Guess what each person is.

This was the slowest ride we went on all day.

I think Dallin and I win the award for best smile.

This is surprisingly scary.

This was the last ride we did at California Adventure before it closed. We were pretty tired by then and kept joking about getting left on this ride...and then we almost did. The guy in charge of letting us out of our cage was on the phone and almost missed us. Luckily, another worker, working the other side heard us laughing and got us out.

Approximately 10:00 pm, we've been at Disneyland now for 15 hours, finally getting to go on Space Mountain...

Dallin still showing no sign of being tired.

And there you have it. After this we concluded our day with a nap on Pirates of the Caribbean as we waited for Indiana Jones to open back up. We got on the Indiana Jones ride at 11:52, then headed toward the shops. By the time we ended up with everyone back at the van it was about 12:45 am, then Jory drove us all back to Las Vegas. Thanks for driving Jory! We could NOT stay awake.