Cousin adventures!

Mary came over with the kids last week and stayed over one night when Jay was gone on an overnight business trip. We had a lot of fun. Mary and I stayed up until about 2am just talking about our new favorite obsession... Twilight! (Side note here... Mary... and Jay for that matter... are both done with the first two books and getting started on #3. I was lucky enough to score two tickets to Stephenie Meyer's book signing/concert for the release of book #4 in August. Mary and I are going to go together... hopefully we can get a sitter and leave early... make a day of it... do some girly stuff and then hit Benaroya Hall in the evening. I can't wait! And as another side note... we conned Linda and Cynthia into reading the series as well! I mean really... what's not to love about Twilight????)

Okay... so moving on... the kids all got up before us of course. I got up and made everyone breakfast... toast and eggs... easy and simple. (See the first picture below.) And then we decided that since we didn't have any other grand plans, we'd take the kids and picnic somewhere. We both agreed that we wanted to go somewhere different. But we couldn't go too far because Mary had to pick up Jay that night from the airport. After picking my own brain, I finally decided that Flaming Geyer State Park would be fun. The day was nice... it was warm... there's water there... and neither of us had ever been there.

We piled into the Pilot with Maiden hunched down in the back and took off! We stopped at the store and got a few cheap eats... picnic food that didn't require a lot of time or prep and away we went. We drove up Hwy 18 and took the Black Diamond exit. We took a right on Green Valley Rd and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery on the 9-mile drive out to the park. There was so much to see... lots of green... lots of farm land... lots of animals and homes on the twisting road. We even stopped at Mosby Farms produce stand and picked up a couple of things... some oranges, other things, and flavored honey sticks.

As soon as we arrived at the park entrance, we got excited. We could tell right off that it wasn't that crowded and it was full of beauty. The entire park is surrounded by green trees. The river runs through the place and its waters were traveling at a pretty good speed. We found an out-of-the-way place and sat at a picnic table and had lunch. Then we went on what we thought was going to be a little hike. As we descended into the forest cover, we didn't really feel good about it and didn't like the direction it was headed, so we turned around and took the kids to a more populated area where they could get their feet wet.

After playing the water for quite awhile, they all wanted to play on the playground equipment. The kids had a great time doing that. Then we packed up and headed home. The kids were all glued to a movie in the car (see the last picture) and nobody would fall asleep and nap! We slept good that night for sure!

Anyway... Mary and I have decided that we need to do more exploring this summer, now that everyone is out of school until September! I can't wait for more adventures!