afraid of heights…yeah, right!

We spent last Saturday out at Red Rock exposing our children to the elements. It was awesome. The Brummett and DeMarco families both joined us. We also had our little buddy, Kavika, up from Arizona. Oh yeah, and we brought a friend’s grandson from Adam’s work. Needless to say, our car was packed with kids and gear. The picture to the left is of our little band. Even our prissy one loves to hike, so the climb was no problems. Dave bought a few pair of kid’s climbing shoes a few months back since they regularly take friends out climbing. Jena has been anxious to let our kids use them for months now. :) Adam also took the kids a few weeks back to buy a couple of children-sized harnesses. Note, Wompy looking like a little utilities worker in his shoulder harness…too cute. At least I don’t have to worry about him or Nikky flipping upside down on the wall. We knew the kids would do great, but it was rewarding to see them all reach the top of the route. Well, all except Wompy. I think he could have done it with another try, and a little help, but we ran out of time.

Nicole was the only one who didn’t want to try in the beginning. Of course, Adam and I basically threw her onto the wall and made her start. She was crying for a few minutes, but then papi helped her realize that she was perfectly safe by letting her hang on the rope off of the ground. After that, she started, and never looked back until she was 50 feet off the ground at the top of the route. She rappelled down without any help or direction. Actually, both of the girls were better on their first tries than the boys. Ezzy scurried on up without a thought. It took Danny two tries to do the whole thing. His first try saw him only 15 feet up. After seeing Ezzy do it, he wanted to try again. Classic Danny!!!!

Above is a picture of each kid on the wall, but there are a ton of picture in our gallery! We may endure blazing hot summers here in the desert, but the benefits are days like this from October to April. The kids are begging to go back to the Mountains. I guess Adam is pretty proud. I think that Danny and Ezzy will be able to do Keyhole on our annual Zion trip in May, if they learn to really swim by then. (I guess I’ll be calling the Y soon for swim lessons.) That also makes daddy very happy. I can’t resist…here are a few more pics: