Exploration on Mr. Charleston

Clay got home!!!Yipee... So to celebrate, we went exploring to Mt. Charleston.  Preston  kept saying that he wanted to hike a mountain, so off we went in search of the mountain. We found a hike called Mary Jane Falls and decided to take it.  Well, when we left Las Vegas it was in the 90s, so we didn't think much about jackets, pants, etc.  Well, when we got to the base of the hike, it was a little chilly...60-70s probably with a little bit of a breeze, but we thought..we will warm up as we hike...and we did (for a while)...the kids started to loose interest up the hill, and we decided we would give it 5 more minutes....well, after 5 minutes, the kids got excited because they started to hear the waterfall...and then they were the ones that wanted to keep going...so up..up...up this mountain we climbed.  We finally reach the falls...(which is small, but the rock cavern was incredible and it really was a neat place...but we unfortunately were there at the wrong time....as we took Aparri out of the pack...she was sooo cold she was shaking...we hugged her and tried to warm her up.  The boys explored for about 5 minutes before the rain started to fall..yes, rain...just a little at first, and then a lot....we were on top of this mountain - with no trees for shelter, no jackets to keep us dry, very little food, and getting colder by the minute....we we start our descend as quickly as possible....but Preston starts crying because he is now tired, cold and wet and doesn't want to walk any more...his crying started as a whimper and then became down right hysterical screams, which lead to Aparri starting to cry, or scream too, and then last but not least...yes, even CJ joins in.  Well, Clay and Laura are now looking at each other and in a moment such as this..you can either laugh or cry...there is no other options....well, we chose to laugh...but that didn't go over very well with the children...they got made at us!  We tried to explain to them that they would laugh at this someday too, just not right now and they were convinced that was NOT TRUE...Well, long story short...we made it down the mountain (several hikers took pity on us and gave us their shirts and jackets to shield the kids...what nice people) and the kids have sworn never to go back to THAT mountain again...but I think we will!!  Time is a great healer!  Oh...welcome home honey!! PS...Laura really wanted to take a picture of the wet crying clan at the bottom...because it was such a funny picture...but it was literally dumping rain and the kids were not about to have it.....so, try and create a picture in your head...it is probably pretty accurate!