The Rattlesnake Climb

I have some seriously fun friends and yet quite a few are also a little demented as well. Take my friend Ms. J (I have several by this name but "you" know who you are!) as an example. Ms. J had a baby just 8 weeks ago (that's 8 WEEKS AGO) and this week decided that she wanted to climb a small mountain with her 5 year old and 8 week old in tow. Somehow she persuaded me and another friend to come along with her and include our kids just to make the trip even more enjoyable (because you know how much my kids love to hike up mountains!).

The weather for the day turned out to be stunningly perfect and thanks to my GPS (see how I've already claimed AH's birthday present) the kids were so enthralled with the hunt for treasure at the top of the mountain that they did the climb beautifully and with minimal whining.

Note super cute picture of Ms. J and her kiddos smiling beautifully for the camera:


Note my kiddo's and their faces (and this was the best of 3 shots!):


The descent turned out to be much harder than the climb. Lots of tired, whining kids and lots of falling and getting scraped up, and a scary fly that tormented Beeb and Mr. B. Alas we made it to the bottom intact and exhausted and as a treat to ourselves we had a nice Thai lunch wherein Mr. B quickly ate his food and then proceeded to lay down and fall asleep in the restaurant!

It was a great day and a great hike with great friends.

On a side note my questionably sane friend, Ms. J, is running a 5K race with me tonight (that's 8 WEEKS after having a baby).

Geocaching

Earlier this month while vacationing with AH's family we took part in a couple of Geocache hunts with his brother. This isn't the first time we've done this fun technology treasure hunt but it is the first time it has occurred to us that it would be a fun way to hike with our family (because we are sharp like that, it only took a couple of years to sink in).

So for AH's birthday I bought him a gently used GPS and we've had a wonderful time trying it out (more to come on this subject as I update our July adventures). Today I downloaded the coordinates for some nearby caches and we took our neighbor and her girls with us on the hunt. We found 5 caches in all and my neighbor even found $100 lying on the ground until Mr. B confessed it was some money he took from me and it fell out of his pocket during a tantrum (probably no more on this but serious consequences to be had later today).

All in all I am totally hooked; just what I need another addicting hobby.

Beef Stew

Beeb requested a bath this morning. While washing her hair some mysterious bubbles floated up to the surface. Beeb announced that she had tooted (obviously). "Or sometimes I call it beef stew,", she told me, "because it is funny."

Indeed.

We're Home

Well we are home from a nice vacation. We got to enjoy the lake, sunshine, boating and playing with all of AH's family.

I am still so refreshed that I actually put all our trip gear away today, the day after we got home - not 2 week from now like I normally do, but within 24 hours of returning home! THAT is a sign of a good vacation.