Double birthday

We had originally planned to have Aaron's birthday this weekend (with friends from the preschool) and Jordan's next weekend (with his elementary school buddies); that's the kind of thing we've done in previous years.  But unfortunately no one was going to be able to come to Jordan's party... I guess the weekend of the 4th fills up.  By last night only one friend had said yes.  Meanwhile Aaron's party, for today, was logging the RSVP's beautifully, 11 kids and 10 grownups.  I was fretting, until I realized that almost all of Aaron's friends have an older sibling who is Jordan's friend; those siblings were already invited; could we possibly just make it a super double brother birthday?  I pitched it to Jordan and he loved the idea.  I think it might be nontrivial for him to endure his brother having his birthday first, and really the two of them love to do things together.  I promised to make each of them their own special cake and they were thrilled.  we didn't even have to change the guest list.  Excellent corollary: one less party to prepare for!

The whole thing was a giant hit.  15 adults and 14 kids (mostly either 4ish or 7ish, plus one infant and two toddlers), and I don't think there was a single argument or tantrum or accident.  The adults had a great time standing around snacking and chatting and drinking Moscato, and the kids variously played baseball, water balloons, and paper airplane war, as far as I know (they were quite independent).  I made a lego cake for Aaron and pokeball cupcakes for Jordan; both were tremendously well received.  (Thank you Danny for these terrific pictures!)

Pokéballs, for those of you not in the know, are what pokémon come in.  The pokemon characters themselves are more than I can handle in cake form, but the balls are graphically simple enough to be doable, and they were very popular.  My usual butter cake recipe.  For the lego cakes, chocolate (by Aaron's request), which made frosting them with a thick smooth bright color trickier; if I were not in the habit of freezing cakes first it might have been rough, but as it was, it just took more frosting.  The connectors are halved marshmallows.  You stab them with a fork to paint them with frosting, then slide them onto the cake.  Of course legos make great layers.

Bryce Canyon

This place is not for me.

I don't mean that I don't like it.  I mean that it does not seem to me to be human-oriented.

You stand at the very top of the big canyon looking in, and the thing is full of these giant, weird formations called hoodoos.  Pillars, spires, sculptures, windows, arches, walls?  The native american mythology is that they used to be people, and I can see that.  But the scale is all wrong.  It looks like you are gazing down into some kind of city full of chess pieces and dinosaurs and flying buttresses.  But really it looks like nothing you would have a name for.

For example, here is an arch.  The bridge leads to nothing; the path under the arch goes from nowhere to nowhere, too steep and gravelly to walk on.  You can use words that make this formation seem like something that is part of your human world, but you're just telling a story.

I think part of the reason I feel this way is that my home is the Pacific Northwest, where the wilderness feels magically lush and accessible.  Okay, the idea that any wild space is created for my comfort is a major illusion, but for pete's sake what am I supposed to think, when the shady woods are full of bubbly streams and berries?  It's so easy to believe in a provident Nature there.  Here, I felt like I was very much on my own, survivalwise.  I actually enjoyed feeling this way.  It felt like something a person ought to keep in mind, not just for survival, but in order to enjoy an appropriate humility about one's place in the world.  It's really a lot bigger than you, and shaped by forces that are way beyond your sphere.

In addition to everything being totally outsized and fairly spooky-looking, it is a just plain harsh environment.  The sandstone doesn't invite much to grow in it.  The canyon rim is quite high (8000-9000 feet), so even just being there felt like hard work, much less walking.  It's also very dry, so my nose was bleeding, and it's super hot during the day and briskly cold at night.  We were cranky and got headaches.  I remembered the feeling from Nepal.

We enjoyed the striking strangeness of it for a couple of days.  We did less hiking and more overlook-gazing than in Zion; though Dale and Deena did go down into the canyon for one long hike and enjoyed it a lot, the rest of us didn't want to do the down-and-up part.  We did some wonderful stargazing on both nights; on the second night, we kept the boys up late and taught them some constellations.  They're actually harder to spot when the sky is so very sparkly... my city-trained eyes could hardly pick out the familiar patterns.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

(Catching up on vacation posts.)  On the way from Zion to Bryce, there are Coral Pink Sand Dunes.  Our kids love nothing more than sand so I thought it was worth a stop.  It was awesome.  The sand was velvety soft and yes, a lovely salmon pink color.  Bare feet were a must.  The top inch of the sand was warm, and below that it was cool.  It was so fine that we watched a beetle leave fancy tracks in it.

I learned a little about the geology of sand dunes.  For dunes to occur, you need (1) a source of sand; (2) lots of wind; and (3) particular geological formations so that the wind slows down rather suddenly, dropping its load of particles.  In this neighborhood, the abundant Navajo sandstone provides the sand.  I don't know why it's windy (why is anywhere windy?) but what wind there is is funneled up this giant bowling-alley-shaped region, concentrating and eventually slowing the fast-moving air so that the sand all falls right here.  Continual winds keep the sands shifting and prevent much vegetation from taking hold.

In the background of the above photo, some teenagers with toboggans are trudging up the biggest dune, hoping for a fun slide down.  It didn't work: the sand is not slidey enough.  This is a shame, because it's devilishly tiring to walk around here.

We did make it to the top of a smaller hill for a photo.