Other Miscellaneous Fun with Cousins

 Dance party with Uncle Bobo was a huge hit!

 As was hiking up the hill behind the house.  (Yes, that's the troop in the distance coming down the hill in the picture below. I stayed behind to get treats ready while they all went for a nice evening hike after dinner.)

 And then one morning we had a family drum and keyboard band.   Somehow I never got pictures of the kids in the wading pool, or eating ice cream, or the popcorn and pajama party we had one night.  Believe me, we had so much fun, it's almost amazing we had time to fit it all in.

Hiking El Morro

Tuesday Cami and I took the kids up to El Morro National Monument for a hike.  It was a spectacular hike.  Not necessarily strenuous (we wore flip flops and even Parker hiked the whole thing by herself.) But the views were magnificent, there was a little climbing and it was just fun.

We packed a picnic lunch and started with that before we ever hit the trail.

Gideon and Lily were given Jr. Ranger workbooks in the visitor's center and told if they filled them out during the hike, they could be sworn in as Jr. Rangers.  They were both very excited by this.

The trail is only two miles long and the first part of it winds up to the watering hole, which is fed by snow run off and rain.  It's what made this place a natural stopping point for travelers along the trail west for hundreds of years.  Many of them left messages and names carved in the rocks and reading these inscriptions is part of the fun of coming here.

After viewing the inscriptions, the trail starts to wind up to the top.  But it's a fairly gradual climb, so even the kids enjoyed it.

Up at the top was really breathtaking.  You get to walk right along the top of the monument and enjoy some really great scenery.

Parker was such a good little hiker, she loved it and she really did great keeping up with the big kids.  Of course, there was also a fair amount of silliness, because with Parker there's always silliness.

All in all, a great hike and a really fun day.  I'd love to go back and hike this again sometime.