Stewart Falls

This summer was the best summer EVER! I loved having both of my sisters here. Chelsey stayed all summer long, Heather came with her kids for a month (and husband for less), and it was the first summer my mom wasn't working. We partied EVERY DAY! I seriously loved it. I love these awesome women in my family.


Aaron and I both like to hike (our spouses don't feel quite the same :). We decided to take 7 kids up to Stewart Falls. I was a little nervous about how things would go because I wouldn't have John's support, but I figured if it all went sour we could just turn around and head back. The kids did AMAZING! Macy and Kate walked the entire way up there, and Kate rode on my back for only a quarter of the way back. They had fun looking for interesting things (we took a million pictures of tipped over trees and roots sticking out of the ground). We counted over 20 butterflies. Hallie fell lots of times but she did her best to be tough. We had a nice lunch at the top. And then we headed back down. Someone at the top told us that if we took another trail, it would be shorter. We decided to take all the kids down that way while Aaron went the other way and got the car. It was nice and it was shorter. But there was this one part near the end that gave me nightmares. I literally had nightmares that night of my children being dragged away in the raging river. The trail became VERY narrow and if you went off the trail, you would fall right into the river. My mom about had a heart attack over it. And I did too. When we got down to the bottom there was a sign that said the trail we had been on was closed. So yeah, don't go that way if you're taking lots of little kids who could have easily fallen in. It haunted me for awhile how close we had been to a tragedy. Other than that though, we had a lot of fun and I was very impressed with how great my kids were on such a big hike.