Busy, Busy!

Last Thursday night around 7:45 pm Luke, Ryan, Maddux and I left for Bryson City, NC where we camp every year with my Mom's side of the family. We were packed into the pathfinder like sardines, Luke had it the worse b/c he was sitting in the back with Maddux (which he wasn't to happy about). I was supposed to drop them off outside of Franklin and they were going to hike in on the Appalachian Trail. WELL, it was raining and we didn't have good directions b/c Luke can't read a map so we never found a spot to drop them off. So we all ended up at the campground around 11:30, where Mom & Sydney were already. It rained some that night, but was nice most of the next day. Luke & Ryan took off for a long hike, and Mom and I setup the campsites. We had a pretty relaxing day on Friday, took lots of walks, sat in the creek with Sydney, went to the grocery store, organized the food, setup the kitchen. Saturday we went for a nice hike, and waited for the rest of the crew to get there. Luke & Ryan also spent about 4 hours putting up a tarp. (WE REALLY NEEDED PAPA!!) Or a video camera.... The Kelley's (Tony, Charis, McKinley, Brandon, Madelyn, Mauri, Brady & Madison) arrived with their very organized van. Auntie, Uncle Chris & Chesed got there a little later. And then the Jackson's with Bryce, Landon & Parker. Josh, Karin & Mario also showed up a little later, but just to drop Mario off then head to a wedding. So we had 11 kids under the age of 10 (McKinley might be 11, I can't remember). We need Ma there for an extra set of hands to push the kids in the stroller, or pull them in the wagon. We got through dinner, and no sooner had we cleaned up that it started to pour down rain, and we weren't prepared so it was pretty chaotic for a little while.

Can I just say that I love this camping spot, I think this is something like our 18th year and it is so peaceful and cool in the mornings and at night. We had nice campfires, smores, walking to the ice cream shop every night, hikes, bike rides, tubing and the hit this year was corn hole. The adults and kids loved it.

Monday the ladies (Mom, Auntie, Me, Chesed, Charis, Karin) and Mr. Jackson decided to go on a hike because Ryan & Luke had raved about this overlook they found while hiking on Friday so they gave us directions, and we set off. Well the directions weren't that great and the sign we were supposed to see was covered in bushes so we ended up finding another trail that wasn't marked. It was beautiful and very steep and lead us to a graveyard, there were only 3 graves but it was pretty neat. We had fun laughing, talking, walking and eating. It was about a 2.5 hour hike, but we were disappointed that we hadn't found the other trail. Daddy got there on Monday afternoon. Tuesday afternoon, we set out again, but this time we had Luke, Ryan, Josh, Chesed, Mr. Jackson, and Josh B. We found the trail we were supposed to go up the first time and hiked for 1.5 hours uphill. And they weren't lying when they said the overlook was awesome. It was BEAUTIFUL!! I want to go back in the fall to see it when the leaves were changing, but it was amazing in the summer. You could see the town of Bryson City and all the mountains around it. I definitely will hike that again! We had to leave on Tuesday late afternoon just after Jake, Amber, Emma and Samuel got there. I took almost 300 pictures so I'll be uploading those later.

Wednesday morning I started class again. Microbiology. I am dreading studying again, but it is just 1 class and it is not on the weekend so that is GREAT! Oh, and we are having a 4th of July party on Friday so I've been getting ready for that. I'll try to get some pictures uploaded tonight.