City of Rocks

 

Fall  break continued with us driving up to Utah to go to City of Rocks with Kayli's family.  It was a quick trip but we had a good time.  I brought stuff to make caramel apples (Kayli was not impressed with that) and we had fun practicing Spanish with Jethro.  The next day at City of Rocks in Idaho was kind of stressful but I feel very blessed with how everything turned out.  The trail was interconnected with dozens of other trailheads and because of the rocks, you could be close to someone and not even realize it.  And I was in the back trailing behind out of sight with Jubal and Efraim and well, we lost Nicolas.  And we didn't even realize it for over a half an hour.  We made it back from the hike and everyone used the bathroom and were eating sandwiches sitting on a fence when I was looking at all the kids, and said, "I think we're missing someone." And Talmage piped up: "Nicolas!"  And yes, we were missing Nicolas and had been for quite some time. Kayli and I looked up by the bathrooms because a couple kids thought they had seen him there, but he wasn't there.  I was just starting to panic because I knew on the trail it would be so hard to find him with all the branches and what would we do with the other kids in the meantime and neither of us had cell phones--mine was out of battery and Kayli didn't have service, so we couldn't call if someone did find him, etc.  And then a person drove up to the kids and asked if we were missing one.  Mrs. Linford, Sebastian's 4th grade teacher, had found him and had even already called Leo.  Definitely a miracle!  The timing even was perfect, because if Kayli and I had started down the trail to look, who knows how long it would have been before they got a hold of us. And if we would have found out he was missing sooner, we also would have been gone looking for him.  So we drove down the road a mile and picked him up.  And then later that day, Nicolas was STILL not paying attention to us and not keeping up. Errrr......