Camping with our C-Group

Labor Day weekend, we had planned to go camping with our C (small) group. We were so excited about some time away in the mountains with our friends. And the new pop up camper didn't hurt either! 

So, we loaded up and headed west to Franklin, NC. 

While Chris set up the camper, the kids found ways to keep themselves occupied.....

I'm pretty sure Creed is eating out of the dog bowl here. 

This is how the kids ate as we stood around looking at them. Our kids did such a great job camping! We talked about it driving home and decided that we should camp way  more often because it's lots of fun and the kids do so well. They're real troopers with the outdoor part and find things to do and play with and hardly fight at all. It's glorious!

On  Sunday, we thought it would be fun to go hiking up to a waterfall. So, here we are all caravaning to the waterfall. The drive was beautiful!  The place we had planned to go to wasn't open (boo) but we found another waterfall complete with picnic sites (yay!) and so we were off!  What was supposed to be a not-so-difficult hike just a mile or so turned into to much more than that. and because we aren't great hikers and slightly out-of-shape it was more difficult than we anticipated. But we had a great time and tried to laugh and sing our way both up and down the mountain :)

it's much more difficult than it looks to carry a kid that way. But Baby Shaun did great!

and then we were there!!  This breath-taking (according to a random lady on the trail) waterfall that was nice but not what we expected by the definition "breath-taking" although it certainly did take all of our breath to hike to it, so maybe that's what she meant.....

Exploring around the waterfall. I'm so grateful for these people that we do life with. It was so much fun to hang out and have everyone share in entertaining kids and hauling the load up a mountain.

After we made it back down from the waterfall, we stopped at another place along the road where there was a river you could jump in. It was a pretty big jump down to the water and some of us passed on that much fun. But others of them thought it looked like fun, and went for it! I heard it was cold :)

Cadence and Sam watching the others jump off the cliff. 

These people have been such a blessing in our life. They have become great friends that were completely unexpected and yet now we can't even think of what we would do without them. I love the way God works those kind of relationships out!