I have empty nest syndrome. No, literally.

When we got home from our trip, we were so stoked to find a little hummingbird's nest in our backyard with 2 teeny tiny little baby hummingbirds!!  They must have hatched while we were gone because they looked a week or 2 old.  It was so much fun over the span of a week to watch them grow, watch Mom feed them, and then watch them learn to fly!  We had a big scare when one of them promptly hit the dirt and stayed on the ground for a while.  I was so scared and was googling like crazy to figure out what to do.  Funny little tidbit I learned?  Hummingbirds are the only birds who do not reject a baby after a human has handled it because they cannot smell their babies (?) so the advice from wildlife rescue sites was to actually lift up the bird and replace it back in the nest!  So, after a few hours of watching the situation nervously (yah, give me a break, I don't have much going on in my life right now :) I nervously approached, talking gently to the little guy.  But, so funny, as I reached out to lift him up (all the while wondering how light and fragile he was going to be and thinking how hilariously and scarily HUGE I must be coming towards him), he lifted off like a drunken little bumble bee and zig-zaggedly flew away into a nearby tree!!  I was so proud I could have cried!!  Over the next few days, the babies hung out in that tree, and Mom would still come feed them (why yes, in case you're wondering, I would go outside frequently to check on their status, hahaha!)  They would be in different branches frequently and I'd often see them haphazardly flying around like the birdie version of Bambie learning to walk for the first time, it was so precious.  But today?  Today I went rushing out to the tree all excited to see my babies, and they're gone!  WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!  I know it was only a matter of time, but my babies are all grown up!  And yes, I realize this officially seals the deal that I'm an old crazy lady claiming ownership to hummingbird babies, but deal with it. 

Anyhoo - here's a montage of the good times while we had 'em.  I hope they remember us and send us a postcard now and then.

 Panic!

Yosemite - aka holy crap bear central!

After time with our buddies, we split off and Rob and I went to Yosemite for a few days - it was amazing.  I had never been before and Rob had only driven through briefly, so we both had an amazing experience spending time together in such a glorious place.

The first day, we spent time at the giant sequoias and hiked around a bit - it was so cool!

There were a bunch of people around though, so we decided to do a fairly remote 7 mile hike back to our hotel.  We started out around 4:30 in the afternoon and it was gorgeous - it was fairly shaded and super quiet.  We were having an amazing time and then a few hours into the hike, we were coming around a blind switchback and then BOOM - ran into a bear.  A huge bear.  Right in front of me about 20 feet!!  It was so scary since we were by ourselves, I had a backpack full of granola bars and we had just scared the bejesus out of a huge furry beast.  It's funny in retrospect, I think the bear and I probably had the same huge eyed expression when we saw each other.  Anyhoo - we backed up quickly, keeping our eyes down and quickly made a plan.  We both picked up sticks, I checked my cell phone in case we needed help (yah, no go there, no service), I took the nice camera out of my backpack in case I needed to ditch the granola-bar bear-bait and then we started yelling and whistling.  We tiptoed very slowly forward since he was sitting on the path the last we saw him, and luckily he had moved up the mountain a bit - watching us the whole time.  He had moved about 50 feet away and I had the weirdest thought go through my head to take a pic of him in case it was the last shot on my camera and people never found us - hey there morbid girl, haha!  So, here's a super blurry shot (because I was shaking like a freakin' leaf!) of our big furry buddy who I'm so grateful to for not eating us.

The whole hike back, we kept checking our 6, we thought every log was a bear, and we were so stressed out - but the funny thing was, we were singing loudly, and yelling the weirdest stuff as we walked around the switchbacks just in case there were other bears.  We're such weirdos.  Wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on the wall watching the shenanigans coming from the Warrenskis? But we're alive and that's all that matters.

The next day we hit a bunch of the different gorgeous sights, Glacier Point:

Bridalveil Falls:

Tunnel View of the Valley:

We hiked to the lower Yosemite Falls:

And then we took our mega hike of the day to the Wapama Falls at Hetch Hetchy Resevoir - so amazingly gorgeous and worth every blister it took to get there!  It was super hot - the car showed 104 degrees, so needless to say, it felt amazing to be misted down...I could have stayed there forever!

Glorious - the power of these falls was incredible!  Apparently the reservoir holds 117 BILLION gallons of water and is the source of water for San Francisco.  It's so cool.

On the way there and back we saw more bears!!  Luckily from our car this time (WAY better than 20 feet in front of my face), and on the way home - we saw a mama with 2 babies!!!  It was tough to get them on camera since we were reluctant to get too close and piss mama off, but at least here's a few shots of one of the little ones - they were sooo tiny!!  Cute overload!!

Baby!!!  He's right behind that little tree on the left, I know it's hard to see him but you can picture him about the size of a really fluffy Galileo.  He's so super tiny!

And here's the rest of our pics if you want to check them out, enjoy!