fall hiking.

We're so very lucky to live extremely close to one of our state parks. And with the gorgeous weather that we've been having, we knew we wanted to take the boys hiking this past Saturday. There was a slight chill in the air – nothing a little hiking wouldn't warm up. The leaves, oh my goodness y'all, the leaves were beautiful. It rained the other night with a pretty extreme temperature drop which knocked a lot of the leaves off the trees... but last Saturday, they were still hanging around and looking absolutely beautiful.

There's a small waterfall that one can hike down to. Since there hadn't been a lot of rain, we knew the falls would be just a trickle. But the real adventure was our hike anyway. We hadn't been to the park since last fall, and noticed that there was a new trail that would lead straight to the bottom of the falls. Sold!

You guys. Taking a two and four year old hiking is already a challenge. The path we chose to take? Pretty much straight down the side of a rock wall. (That photo of me holding their hands, and the one beside it? Behind us, that's what we came down.) Seriously. It was fun, but man, it was tough to make sure that the boys were steady where they were before we moved on. Jeremy and I kept passing them to each other. But the boys did so great! They listened and stayed still when we needed them to and followed directions when we needed...

"Stand right there. Don't move."
"Sit down on your hiney and slide down this rock."
"Cayden, I know this is weird, but we really need you to hug this tree and not let go!"

It took us 45 minutes to climb down our rocks, but we were very proud of ourselves for making it without anyone getting injured. We looked at the trickle of the waterfall, crossed over the creek and started hiking back up the other side. Going up was a little easier, and it was fun to encourage the boys to find the right path for themselves.

Jeremy noticed that Cayden was walking a little, um, strained and asked if he needed to go potty. No big deal, boys can pee in the woods easy-peasy right? But, he needed to poop. Jeremy luckily had some tissue in his pocket and found the perfect spot for Cayden to squat over a tree branch.

Y'all, if you ask Cayden, pooping in the woods was his favorite part of the day. Boys...