Fall Hikes

Hiking is perhaps my favorite fall tradition. This year for my birthday, Erik and I dropped the girls off at my parents' house and hiked the Jones Bridge Trail along the Chattahoochee. It was nice to be outdoors for a while and to have Erik all to myself. And there's nothing like a long hike to work up a good appetite for dinner...especially at my favorite Chinese restaurant.

We also continued our tradition of hiking around Stone Mountain during General Conference weekend.
Here we are Saturday morning before the first session. I think we stopped for a photo op at this same rock last year.

Erik and I always forget that long hikes aren't very realistic for 3-year-olds. I think we made it about as far as we did last year. Not very far.

Erik and I also decided to have a little getaway for one night during his week's vacation in October. We chose Amicalola Falls. We took Anne with us, and Abigail had another sleepover at Grandma's.

I love going camping with Erik. Half the fun for me is just seeing him get so excited about everything. And when you go camping as infrequently as we do, there's always much more adventure involved. We have always enjoyed the challenge of setting up tent and preparing dinner by flashlight in the past. We were proud of ourselves this time, though, for thinking to set up the tent BEFORE we enjoyed our walk in the woods at sunset. We did eat our silver turtles in the dark, though. We also had to get creative for breakfast after realizing we'd left our frying pan and pot on the kitchen table. We made do. No hot chocolate, though. Bummer.
Anne was a happy camper for the most part. The only time she wasn't smiling was for the first hour after we got up. Perhaps the forty degree weather numbed her cheeks a little?

Fortunately it warmed up later on. Here's Anne minus about five layers and smiling again.

Our only concern about this trip was how Anne would fare during the night. She is used to falling asleep on her own around 6. Erik and I envisioned her crawling around the tent until she fell asleep, which would probably take a lot longer than usual since it would still be light outside.

Things ended up going more smoothly than we'd expected. I bundled Anne up in so many layers that she could hardly move. When I packed all the warm layers, I hadn't really thought about the immobilizing effect! It worked really well. She was asleep by 7 and slept soundly all through the night. Yay!