Family Hike

The weather around these parts has been unusually warm for January, so we can't just sit inside on our days home.  We took advantage of the warmth by going for a rather long hike Sunday afternoon.  After church Sunday morning, we swung by the house to change into our hiking attire.  Then we decided to go grab lunch before hiking.  Pizza was the choice & instead of eating in we took it to go and ate at the entrance of the hiking trails.  Perfect!

We started our hike in a fairly normal manner.  Micah & Zion wanted to play our normal hiking game of hide & seek (a pair of kids run ahead and hide & they win if we pass without spotting them).  We've played this game many a time with no problems...then came Sunday.  Micah & Zion ran ahead like always, but they went onto another trail instead of staying on ours.  After walking for a little ways and realizing that they are not answering our calls (actually yells!), a little panic started to set in.  Of course my momma mind started thinking they had been kidnapped or they've gotten themself so lost that they'll be stranded for days.  After thinking about it logically, Bobby went the direction that we last heard their voices coming from & I stayed on the other trail.  In a matter of minutes Bobby had found them.  Let's just say that Micah had stayed calm (he said they were in the process of trying to find their way back to our vehicle), but Zion was really scared.  As you can see from the picture below, he returned with some tears in his eyes & a bloody nose from falling while hiding.  We all had a moment of instruction as to what to do if you ever get lost from your group & then we continued our hike, thankfully with all of us together.

Every time we hike these trails, we get a picture in this weird tree.  This time around Abi is peering behind one of the trunks. :)

We had to leave our mark on the wilderness, so of course the manly men carved initials in the tree.  Bobby had the famous B & K.  And Micah went for the M & J (his little crush in school). 

We met up with Jon & the girls for part of the hike too...a family affair.

I think we ended up being in the woods for about two and a half hours, and it was wonderful.  We are an outdoorsy (if that's a word) family.  It was just plain relaxing to be walking thru the woods enjoying God's creation.  Probably the only thing that could of made it better would be if we were walking back to our camper instead of back to our vehicle, but that will be in the near future I do believe (I think I heard Bobby mention even tonight a camping trip within the next two weeks...we shall see).