So Much!

There is just so much I could share from the past few days, I don't know where to start! I think I'll break it down into phases! You see, I just spent three fabulous days on a retreat with some of our youth and the youth leaders…amazing! It was so full of planning, resting, laughing, and hanging. Hmmm…what shall I tell you about first?

I know…I'll start with nature!

Something you may have gathered from the pictures I occasionally post is that the Talented One is not only an amazing pianist…he also has a love for…er…wild animals. And on this retreat, he found someone else to share this passion with. It's probably not a coincidence that this person also shares the same name as my son. Ha Ha!

It started out simple enough. My goofy friend and I were sitting on a swing, enjoying our peaceful moment, when I happened to glance over and see the two boys lifting up a massive rock together. I said to her, "They must be after a lizard."

I was wrong. Because a few moments later, they came over to show us this:

A few hours later, we were relaxing in the cool waters of Sedona, when my friend came up to me to inform me that the boys were pretty dangerous. HUH?

It seems they'd been exploring again, and came across a cute little baby snake. The Talented One knew it looked different, but didn't realize at the time what it actually was. Apparently they came back to the group with this cute little baby snake crawling between their fingers and such. That is, until one of our fearless leaders (because by this time, most of our leaders were fearFUL) explained to the boys that they needed to get rid of it and get rid of it now. Turns out, it wasn't a cute little harmless baby snake. It was a baby rattlesnake. (BTW…the fearless leader's son was my son's twin adventurer!)

We thought they'd manage to stay out of trouble for the rest of the day. We even managed to make it to the dark with no more wildlife incidents. For the most part. There was the moment they showed up to share another creature with us.

Before we got a good look at it, one of the leaders asked if they'd caught a scorpian….nope. It was just a little crawdad, thankfully!

It seemed their adventures were coming to a wind down…but apparently, they had enough energy for one more adventure. They came in asking for a flashlight. Ok.

And then, they came back in hysterics. Apparently there was a certain smell in the air, so they decided to investigate. See, personally, I would have gone the opposite direction, but not these two adventurers. They went after the smell…and shined their light upon…you may have an idea where I am going with this one. They stayed long enough just to snap a picture and then RAN as fast as they could!

I'm glad they were smart enough to know what a raised tale on a skunk means, because we didn't have any tomato juice!

Thankfully, we were headed home the next morning because I am not sure what kind of trouble these two would have gotten themselves into next!