Hiking for Bears and buried treasure

This week we have another 9 year old cousin staying with us, so we've been doing a lot of work with the two cub scout boys to help them get their Bear badges.

Part of one requirement had them go on a family hike, so that was our big planned activity for school today. We were going to meet up with some other home schooling friends, but we never did find them, so we set off to find a place for us to do our own hike. I think I first realized I might be in over my head when we came to a sign at the first place we stopped to hike which said, "Caution, Rattlesnake Area" and the whole backseat started pleading, "yes, please yes, let's hike here!" I made a quick turn around with the car and headed to go find another site, one without a bright yellow piece of paper promising an unforgettable hiking experience.

The canyon was in full, color-changing splendor.I had dressed us all in bright colors - easy to spot those who run ahead on the trail, and in our case, those who lag behind on the trail as well.We hiked uphill for about half an hour and then stopped to have some trail mix and exploring time.And of course I had to snag a couple of pictures. I may take a bazillion pictures of my kids, but the way I think of it is this, one, with kids this adorable and wonderful, I can't help but take pictures of them constantly. And two, if for any reason, there were to come a day when I didn't have one of kids, I would rather have too many pictures to help me remember them than not enough. We each had our own backpack with a bag of trail mix, a a pack of crackers, and a camel back of water. The kids thought that was the greatest thing in the world! Emmy and Garrett probably drank their weight just for the fun of it!Emmy is following in his big brothers' footsteps and loves to make silly faces whenever anyone looks at him.I had him in the baby backpack and the whole way up the hill he kept hissing in my ears calling out to all the snakes. Once we got to our stopping point, we found a couple of bee nests and he was ready for some comforting. I don't know which one I'd prefer, the bees we found or the snakes we were calling.The way down was much easier, and there wasn't any complaint of tired legs and needing bathroom breaks (Garrett had to go almost constantly because he was drinking so much and Spencer was pretty sure I was trying to kill him by having him walk uphill, in the heat, with a backpack on.) All complaints disappeared when we saw the playground across the parking lot. Energy reentered their bodies and playtime began again.We played for about 45 minutes on the playground and then had to rush the boys to their very first writer's guild meeting.

The story I posted a few days ago was Owen's Pirate story, and I will post Garrett's here soon as well. They wrote them for a new club they are in with some of their home school friends. They have started a writers guild for the boys and this month's theme was "pirates". We typed them up, singed the edges, and they were ready to turn them in. Each boy who wrote a story had the chance to go to Pirate Island...a suped up Chuck-E-Cheese on steroids type of place with a pirate theme.How can a place go wrong when this is what you are greeted by when you first come in?The decoration was great throughout the whole place. There was gold on the walls, fake fire for lights, and the bathrooms were for "bucaneers" and "maidens."There were awesome video and arcade games that the kids all got to play. We found out that Emmy loves racing games and that it pays to be a scrounger and look to the floor for dropped coins and tickets.It had wonderful games like this one. The goal is to knock over the bugs. A simple enough game, and here are the instructions:

Classy, eh?