Hiking again

Ahhh, it's good to be hiking again. Granted, we haven't done anything strenuous yet, mostly because we can't seem to get to the trails early enough to have a 2-3 hour hike. We're still getting a hang of handling 4 kids who all seem to like experimenting with how long it's going to take us to pack and get everything ready while they are doing exactly the opposite, with fighting and whining thrown into the pot, just to add to the fun.

I told Mark, as stressful as it is right now to have those outings, and as much as we get punished for trying to do exciting things with kids, it's all worth it, even if we lose our minds in the process. Because weeks, months and years later we will look at the photos and won't remember any of the crazy stuff that had to happen in order to have those bits of fun captured in our memories and photos...

:: Ensign Peak trail ::

the place where we got eaten alive by the mosquitos

As beautiful as it looks in the photos, going through the meadows in the evening after rain was NOT a good idea. Anya had just recovered from her reaction to a mosquito bite a week ago, when half of her face got swollen, and there we were again, in mosquito land, being followed by hordes of hungry little pests.

We never made it to Lake Mary, partly because we started too late, partly because we just couldn't take any more mosquito bites. Nevertheless, the view was breathtaking, the after rain freshness of air was energizing and the photos of 3 of our kids together taken at our rest point were priceless.

P.S. As I was going through the photos today, I noticed that the 'offender' was caught on 'tape', the very mosquito that gave Anya another swollen eye.