Trail West Family Camp Day 3

Hiking day!  We hiked up to Cottonwood Pass beginning at roughly 12,100' and ending at (again) approximately 12,500'. 

 

Finley got a great seat on the way up to the top...in a backpack on Sean's back.  It was so cozy, she ended up taking a little snooze. 

Too bad for her, she missed a lot of beautiful views!

Let me sing the praises of my husband.  SE, whose praises I will sing in a moment, was having some issues walking all the way up the mountain.  I mean you would think he was 3.5 years old or something.  He didn't want to walk, but he also didn't want to ride in a backpack.  The other options were to either be left or carried.  Honestly, we tried to leave him, a couple of times, but he would start screaming, and we didn't want to ruin everyone else's walk up the mountain.  So my amazing (and Ironman) husband walked up (most) of the mountain with one child (thankfully asleep) on his back and one child in his arms.  He is a rock star!

Fin woke up to enjoy the view from the top!

As I said, SE had a few issues.  He started off great as evidenced below...

Then I guess the trek on the narrow, rocky path overlooking the edges of the mountain spooked him a little, and he kind of flipped out.  After we made it to the top, I looked around and realized that any other child within a year (plus or minus) of SE was not walking on their own accord.  Oops...apparently it might be a little too much to ask a 3.5 year old to walk up the side of a mountain.  But SE did it, and later when we were asking him what his favorite things were, he said the hike up the mountain was one of them so hopefully we didn't traumatize him too badly!

My brave boy!

After we got back to camp, SE got to go on a pony ride.  Again, I was super impressed with my brave boy.  As we were walking up to the stables, he said he didn't want to ride the ponies.  We said that's okay, SE, you can just look at them and pet them and if you change your mind, they will be available to ride.  When he saw the ponies up close, he agreed to ride one of them.  He did choose the more gentle of the two ponies and rode him twice!  Sean and I were so proud of our little man!

After the ponies, we decided to play a little Frisbee golf.  It has become an SE favorite as with any other sport.  He is actually probably better than I am. 

SE ducked any time I threw the Frisbee.  Ha!

I had to quit the game a little early to go get this precious face who was napping like a champ back in our room.  Oh yeah, you can leave your kids in the room to nap, and they are perfectly safe!

After Fin Bug got up, I got a few shots with some of SE's new buddies.  He made friends with some of the kids in the room next to ours.  Mason, Henry and Susie Grace are all he could talk about from the moment he got up to the moment he went to sleep.

Wednesday was a full day for us.  It was also a revolutionary day.  God revealed some pretty amazing things He wants to do in this season of our lives.  We aren't sure what exactly that will look like, but we know we've heard Him speak.  And we want to be obedient to His voice.  He is, after all, the One who created the beauty we saw on our hike, instilled the bravery and friendliness in our SE, gave my husband crazy strength and created our Fin to have one of the most joyful hearts I've ever seen.  He has nothing but goodness in store for the Boyd family, and we got to see so much of it on day 3!