Last Sunday, we decided to celebrate Easter by going on a family hike in the canyon. We went to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail; it sort of sounded like "Bunnyville", so the kids found a little humor in it.
While hiking we saw some free climbers scaling the face of the mountain and the kids thought that was awesome. A little ways done the path we spotted a cave a couple hundred feet up and the boys immediately wanted to check it out for hibernating bears. Not wanting the stand at the bottom of the trail and watch my two oldest boys plummet to their deaths, I went with them...I guess so we could all plummet together :-) It wasn't scaling the face like the other group was, but it was a good steep climb up craggy rocks...Owen was in heaven! This was a view from the climb up where we could see Scott and Teagan and Emmett watching us from below:
When we got to the mouth of the cave the boys were a little disappointed to not find a sleeping bear or a den of rattlesnakes or anything cool like that. All we found was some graffiti and the remains of a campfire. 
But they still made for some nice pictures of my handsome fellas :-)
Once we climbed back down, we all finished our hiking as the rain clouds rolled in and started to rain slush on us. Those poor people were still on the face of the mountain as we left and we all wondered what they were going to do in the cold slushy rain...Emmerson had fun hiking like the big kids and kept taking our hiking sticks to use for himself even though daddy had a backpack for him to ride in. He is getting to be such a big boy:-)
Then on Tuesday night we had pack meeting. Garrett had finished up four belt loops and three pins, so those are what he was awarded this month. Some of these things he had started when he first joined scouts and he only had to finish up one or two aspects of them, so they were in the works for quite a while! The one he was most proud of was getting the video games belt loop and pin... I had held off on letting him work on that one because I think it is a nonsense belt loop and not worth the time, but he and his cousin wanted to work on it together, so while we had Spencer with us for a week, they both finished off the requirements for the loop and pin together. Garrett thinks that is a cool loop to have. The other loops he got were Abilities Awareness, Physical Fitness, and Bowling. 
Thursday brought our next grand excitement. While I was inside doing laundry, the kids were outside enjoying some sunshine and blue sky (they have been infrequent visitors for us lately - here one day, followed by 2" of snow the next. You learn to grab what you can when you can) Our friendly garden snake, Sampson, was out enjoying the weather as well, and the kids (along with half of the other kids from the neighborhood) were all on a chase to catch him. After an hour or so of chasing him around the yard, Garrett was the proud winner!
Sampson was so thrilled at having been chased for such a long time and then to be man-handled by a small child that he awarded him with three bites on the hand! He chomped down on Garrett's hand, but since his little teeth were just that, little, only the top ones were able to puncture the skin; the bottom fangs didn't peirce the underside of Garrett's hand at all.
Luckily he is just a harmless checkered garter snake, and as long as all the mice he has been eating were clean, Garrett should be fine :-) (so far the bites are healing well - they are a little red and really tender, but no sign of infection)Out of all the accidents I anticipate and foresee in my kids - head injuries, cuts, broken bones, falling out of trees, bee stings, etc.. - snakebites never even blipped on my radar. I guess I still have a lot to learn about being a Boy's Mom :-)
Never underestimate the power of testosterone in a little boy!
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