Tie-Dye

 Alice wanted to do a tie-dye project, so after she made the shirts, she did some more on paper towels.

Alice's art

 Alice does a lot of painting, especially in summer when she needs to kill time between morning screens (8-10 am) and afternoon screens (5-6 pm).

Simon's July Fish

 Simon spends most of his free time fishing. Sometimes the kids he fishes with (Calvin and Keaton) send me pictures of the really big ones.

Here he is at his favorite store:

Accidents happen

Sometimes you drop your entire breakfast on the floor (blueberries, bread, sausage).

Simon's garden grows

 Simon's favorite thing to do when we get back from a trip is to go down to the garden to see how much its grown in the time we were gone. Sometimes when I am too busy to go down and look for myself, I will send him down with my phone to take some pictures. He is very proud of his cucumber.

Swim team end of season party & awards

 We packed up from camping at Linville Falls in time to get home, unload, take showers, run to the store, prepare a veggie tray, and go to the end-of-season swim team party and potluck by 6pm. The team won their division trophy this year, which was very exciting.

They did awards by age group, so here's Simon with his 7-8 boys.

Alice and the 9-10 girls.

Coach Robert isn't coming back next year unfortunately.

Upper Creek Falls Loop hike with waterslides

Before this trip, like literally the night before, I finally researched some hikes. My problem is that I don't like to plan too far in advance because I forget everything. But leaving it to the last minute is problematic too, because then I don't have enough time to properly research the hikes. I'm still scarred from that year we went on the horse poop trail in the Smoky Mountains and wasted a hike. So I did my homework the night before, and of the listed hikes, I decided we should try to do Upper Creek Falls Loop, since it was short, nearby, and had a promising name.

The hike started out in a beautiful forest, where we hiked downhill to the falls. Simon loves gatorade and often can't wait to start drinking it on a hike.

We soon came to a beautiful spot where the trail crossed a river. 

One direction appeared to drop off the face of the earth. The other direction looked innocent enough, but it led up to a great sliding rock with a pool beneath it.

I hiked up a trail above the slide to watch the kids go down. Zac stayed there and supervised the whole time from the other side.

Big sliding rock

After a while, the girls got cold and got out to have a snack. Zac and Simon hunted for critters in the rocks.

Eventually, we decided to continue the hike and head down to see the falls from below.

We eventually crossed the river again, and discovered another sliding rock area!

Small Sliding Rock

Lower Sliding Rock

The kids eventually got tired and cold and came back up to have snacks.

I couldn't believe how lucky we'd gotten on this hike! The trail itself was quite lovely, but to find three waterslides was an unexpected bonus.  Poor Simon wanted to do the slides, but was unwilling to get in the freezing cold water. We eventually completed the loop and hiked back up along switchbacks to get to the parking lot. What a fun day!

Linville Falls Campground & River

 For the second half of our mountain trip, we camped at Linville Falls Campground. We camped here with Rob and Kate in the fall about 12 years ago, when I was just barely pregnant with Alice and hadn't told anyone yet. What brought us here again (because I remember being wholly unimpressed with the campground itself) was that Jess and Rosa camped here last fall and noticed that there were some campsites right along the river. Knowing Alice and Anna's affinity for water plus Simon's fishing obsession, they thought it would be fun to camp here this summer. I made the reservations and here we are.

Our campsite was on the edge of a field, and right behind the trees was the river. Simon spent quite a lot of time down there fishing, and befriended the families of our neighboring campers as they also spent time at the river. Alice and Anna flitted about, sometimes at the river, sometimes hanging around the campsite. 

The first night, it rained right at nightfall, so we had an early night sheltering in our tents. The next day was nice, but the third day (Monday) it rained off and on all day. Good thing we have our rain cover! We didn't even go on a hike--we just enjoyed relaxing at our campsite and by the river. 

On the second night, it didn't rain, so the kids had a lot of fun wearing glow sticks and running around the field while the adults sat by the fire chatting.

Day 3, we just stayed at the campsite all day. When it wasn't raining, Simon was fishing.

We only sat in the river for a while before we went up for lunch, then it started raining.

The rain started up again just when it was time to start the fire. Rosa planned to grill meat for supper, and we were excited to try her famous steaks.

All in all, it was a great campout!