All at once...

We are going to the Storytime Live! show tonight, we won the tickets while at a Redhawks game over the summer. On Friday, we're going to see Thomas at the annual Day Out With Thomas even at the railroad museum. Then on Saturday the boys have the next Lowe's Build and Grow Workshop which is the safety week project so they are going to have a Fire Truck, Ambulance and Police Cars there. We'll be busy but it should be fun.

Our first camping trip

We decided to go to Lake McMurtry for our first camping trip last Saturday. It was hot. Very hot. Probably wasn't a good idea to go on such a hot day but we did. The boys had fun roasting their marshmallows for S'Mores and they liked eating outside, peeing outside, cooking outside and sleeping outside. We went swimming for a little bit to try to cool down and eventually the boys both got into the water all the way up to their necks. The water was warm though so it didn't really cool anyone off. It was still fun and we'll do it again, when it cools off. I'll post pictures whenever I get around to uploading them but since we have Storytime Live! tomorrow and Day Out With Thomas is this weekend it won't happen until at least this weekend.

This weekend

What should we do, what will we do? There's hiking, there's camping, there's the zoo, there's the drive-in, there's the State Fair and so many other things.

One of the biggest deciding factors is that Jerry is on call again, many of the places we've gone hiking don't have cell service which is not a good thing when on call and in need of a cell phone.

Another factor is our fall weather that was supposed to show up this week, did not. It supposed to be in the 90s yet again but at least the humidity has gone down.

So I have no idea what we'll be doing, hopefully sleep will be considered because I'm tired...

Hiking boots

Two weeks ago we decided, on a random Saturday, to go hiking. Jerry and I have discussed it often in the past and we've even gone to a local park to 'hike', it's more a walk with some hills. We weren't sure when we'd be able to take the boys, I mean Kaleb is only 3 years old, he's only been walking for 2 years. But we really wanted to get out of the house and not do the same things we always do like go to the zoo so we decided to give it a shot, what was to lose, if Kaleb or Zachary weren't able to do it we could find easy trails which we know they can handle and wait a year or two more for the intermediate and advanced trails.

So we drove about an hour and a half away to Red Rock Canyon State Park and did some light hiking. We really liked the park and enjoyed the hiking, the boys called it jungle hiking because the whole trail was through bamboo.




The next day we drove about two and a half hours to Quartz Mountain State Park, we did some more intense hiking and I decided we all needed hiking boots. We hiked to our first cave and Zachary kept asking if the giggly bears were going to come back to the cave. He also started with emphasizing everything by saying "soaking" like "soaking hot" or "soaking fun".



On Labor Day we went out and all got some hiking boots.


We broke in the hiking boots the next Saturday in the Wichita Mountains. Zachary kept asking if we were going to hunt witches, no amount of explaining the word Wichita convinced him that witches didn't live in those mountains. We started with a short walk at Medicine Park



...then we went into the wilderness area. Zachary was sure the black marks on the road (in the next picture) were witch tracks.


We conquered our first mountain, Elk Mountain, all 2270 feet of it. Kaleb hiked up himself (with very little help from anyone), we impressed some other hikers when we told them Kaleb was only 3.






1/2 way up the mountain



Top of Elk Mountain!


On the way back out of the Wildlife Preserve we found a Buffalo on the side of the road...no fences or gates, free roaming Buffalo and prairie dogs. We also saw some long horns but some noisy motorcycles scared them away before I could get my picture.