summer vacay: part 3

after arriving home from our relaxing beach vacation, we got up the next day and headed to the mountains for a little family vacation with my dad and stepmom. i sure am thankful for my family and that this is something i look forward to doing. the kids love playing with their cousins and i love hanging out with my crazy bro & sis.

the cabin was beautiful, a little tight in the sleeping department for the age of kids that we all had, but after a few trial nights, we figured out a system.

we went on family hikes,

 

cousin huddle in a tree. we were on a pretty long hike in search of ice cave, but unfortunately we never found it. such a bummer. the kids were super troopers though, especially the little ones.

R finally caught his first fish!!! it was so exciting! we had hiked to a pretty small pond. the big kids were pretty sure that there were only around 10 fish in there. once we caught them, we thru them back. they were preeeeety small. they would bite in like 1.5 seconds. not the brightest species.
R was pretty pumped anyway.

 his sister not so much.

look at the size of it!! dinner for all!

D didn't mind it at all. she was helping unhook & throw back. that girl can do anything.

my little lion man. my dad called him raggedy andy.

we drove to a stable but found out the boys weren't old enough to ride. they were nice enough to let the kids walk around, pet & even sit on a horse. that was pretty exciting.

 the next day we took the kids to a different stable that kids were permitted to ride. R liked his mighty steed. he looked a little questionable to me. one of the eyes looked somewhat infected i.m.o.

i just love my little handsome cowboy.

next up, i took the bigger girls on an hour ride while paul stayed with the little boys. i got a little nervous. i used to love horses, but now i guess i value my health and questioned the risk i was taking. what if i fell off and broke a leg? what if one of the horses took off with one of the kids? what if one of the kids got hurt? for heaven's sake my horse only had one eye. what was with the eye epidemic going on here? what if our eyes got infected?
i decided to just go with it since the kids were so excited. i did insist that two wranglers go with us though.

it was a beautiful ride. the man from snowy river soundtrack was playing in my head.

sure enough D's horse was a little testy. he took off several times. luckily not too fast. she didn't seem too traumatized by it.

 

we had s'mores galore.

i captured this photo from the loft. my dad has interesting thoughts on babysitting....

 the kids fire safety abilities were questionable. it got a little lord of the flies-ish a few times.

R was thrilled to shoot grandpas bb gun. his favorite part of the whole trip though, he says, was when grandpa showed him a real bullet. more than s'mores, more than shooting the bb gun, more than catching that friggin fish paully worked so hard to line up... his favorite was simply looking at a real bullet.

as much as we dreaded heading back to the heat, it was time to go back and get ready for school. and our summer vacations had come to an end.