A Treacherous Adventure and Old Time Train Ride

A requirement of living in the Austin area is that you surrender the idea of going for "walks." In ATX, people go on hikes. And the best part is that you can go on said hike down a semi-developed trail, completely surrounded by nature, feeling like you're in the middle of the forest, and be 2 minutes from downtown. We decided the kids were old enough to tackle one of these above mentioned hikes. Just before school started, we loaded up the crew and met up with some good friends.

Ryla is always grateful to have some girl friends to rescue her from life in a home with a male-majority.

And the boys just want to throw rocks and hit things with sticks...

The boys were cracking us up that day. They kept seeing runners with their shirts off and asking why the runners got to take their shirts off and the kids didn't. In their words, they wanted to, "show off their muscles. too." Just like all good parents do, we caved once they pushed us over our whining-limit.

When you're in the woods with no shirts on and you find a dry creek bed with giant rocks and boulders, there's really nothing you can do except climb all over them. I should mentioned an important aside. We cam across this creek bed about roughly 300 yards after getting on the trail. That's as far as we got for the day. Once they climbed all over the rocks for about 20 minutes they were all near the point of death via heat stroke. So our hike was really just a 600 yard stroll to a bunch of rocks, but it was still an adventure to them.

It's cool to show your muscles off by losing your shirt, but it's way cooler to get rid of your shirt and carry rocks over your head...

After the first 100 feet of trail walking, there was a steady rotation of small children looking for shoulder rides. Everyone knows that this is really why dad's go on trips like this, because who wants to go through the trouble of renting a pack mule for the day?

And here are a couple obligatory "aren't our kids cute!?" pictures. These 6 really do enjoy hanging out with each other. We're big fans of the Dishman crew and wish we didn't live on the complete opposite side of Austin from them.

Once we completed our perilous 600 yard trek, the kids needed a chance to rest and recover, and since were just down the street from the Zilker Zypher, it seemed to be an ideal spot to allow for that.