ridiculousness.

You’ve been warned. The number of pictures in this post is nothing short of ridiculous.

But our little family struck out in a hike this morning and the camera wouldn’t look kindly on being left behind.

As soon as we made our plans for the morning Sarah scurried off to her room to don the appropriate attire. A skirt, of course. The child no longer wears anything with split legs – shorts, capris, blue jeans, nothing. She tried to pitch a fit about wearing the tennis shoes I chose for her but I drew the line there. We compromised on no socks which I knew was a bad idea. But some lessons are  better learned the hard way, right?

Painfully predictably,  no less than five minutes into the trail Sarah announces that she can’t walk another step. Her feet hurt. She might die. Her daddy stops to give her a pep talk. So B-Ro just…well…I don’t quite know what B-Ro was doing.

Whatever his issue was, it was quickly resolved. For there were sticks (a tick!) and rocks (a kock! – I know, I know) and holes to be found.

The pinnacle of our hike was no less than a quarter of a mile down the trail. We’re some hearty hikers, lemmetellyou. By this point Sarah was barely ambulatory and Ephraim caught wind of the trail mix we had in the backpack.

  

Or should I say, he caught wind of the chocolate chips we had in the trail mix we had in the backpack. Yes, that would be more accurate.

  

 

So our “trail mix” was actually pieces of Ritz crackers, coconut, and chocolate chips. Ants had gotten into our raisins and little Ephraim’s histamines don’t jive with peanuts. The kids were just fine with that. Next time I think they’d prefer I leave out the crackers and coconut though.

Next time I think I’ll just bring gel packs of high-calorie chocolate. You know like the marathoners use? We gotta keep our stamina up.

Some crazy, unkempt, sweaty hiker found her way into our photos. I’ll need to speak with Brent about that.

 

And wonders never cease, a self-timed family photo to end the morning. 

 

And then we loaded the children onto our backs and staggered the quarter mile back to the car.