Labor Day Weekend: Part 3

We really enjoyed camping. It had been too long! And it was so fun to watch Ethan have fun with all the rocks and sticks and things. He had a blast!

We don't normally like to be gone on Sundays, but this weekend we made an exception. After we had breakfast Sunday morning, we all went out hiking. Well, all of us started on our way, but poor Allysa was not feeling well at all, so her parents took her back to camp.

We hiked up Mount Wheeler to look at the glacier. Here are my lovely parents. Mom didn't make it very far either because the high elevation (more than 10,000 feet) made it difficult for her to breathe. Overall, her health has been improving though.

We hiked with Brady. We thought we were all going to be in one big group, but we all got separated into little groups. Brady did really well over those 4 or 5 miles!

I had to have a shot in the hollow tree. :)

There were lots of really cool trees.

Brady saw this pointy trunk sticking out and said, "That's a unicorn buried up to its horn!"

And here's a view of the glacier. Some of the others went all the way to up to it, but this is as far as we got.

We were happy to meet up with Rachel and Bryant for a while!

The boys all drew with sticks in the dirt and the viewpoint.

Brady was dragging pretty hard towards the end of the hike. . .until he started telling Terral about Star Wars. Suddenly he was a Sand Person and there was a war going on!

Ethan thought the "shooting" was pretty darn fun too!

He even got in on the action!

That evening we had a little testimony meeting around the campfire. It was definitely not a regular Sunday, but it was a good day!

The next day we went to Lehman Caves. This was one of my favorite parts of our trip! We tried to get a family picture in front of the visitor's center, but Ethan and I didn't do so well at looking at the camera at the same time. ;)

 

Before we went into the cave, the guide talked to us and let us touch some broken stalactites so we wouldn't be tempted to touch things inside.

I don't have any pictures of the inside because I only had my phone for a camera (but I found my battery charger for the camera yesterday! Hooray!). Ethan had a fantastic time in the cave! He did try to touch things once or twice, but he was really good when we said he couldn't. He loved looking at all the interesting things. He also loved running his hands along the rails whenever they had them. I think he had the most fun in the lodge room though. There wasn't much to look at in this room because they had used it for meetings a long time ago and broken a lot of the formations, but there was room to run around, and the kids took advantage of that! They spun and giggled and played, and it was lots of fun to watch!

Another favorite memory from the caves is when Bryce said we should do the Dark Crystal thing and suddenly there was a chorus of deep male voices droning in the caves. Our guide had his hands full. :)

Here are my boys just after we exited the caves. 

A little rock climbing going on.

And then we treated ourselves to ice cream! It was just what I needed. ;)

We had a really great time with family, and we look forward to getting together again!