A lovely weekend

Well, I was right, Tom's soccer game was postponed from Tuesday to Thursday night and unfortunately they lost the semi final match. Fortunately for us it meant Tom didn't miss the final on Saturday. bright side to everything, right?
After school on Friday we all got in the car and headed off for the weekend to Northwest Alabama and the Dismal Canyon and Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge, Northwest Alabama.

Our cabin in the Dismal Canyon park.

A VERY large leaf.

Lily, Tom, Willa & Ethan, what you can't see is that they are all wearing matching welly boots, we entered the canyon for our walk after a quick pit stop in Walmart for a very well spent $15 each on footwear.

Waterfall in Dismal Canyon.

After a very eventful drive on Friday (detouring through Birmingham to avoid a 10 car pile up on I65 and then stopping for dinner so we avoided the tornado but still managed to drive through some awful rain - had to drive at 20mph on the interstate because I couldn't see very well) we finally arrived at our cabin in the canyon park. A well deserved glass of wine and then to bed.

Saturday morning we went into Hamilton to meet up with Tim & Deanna who were staying at her parents house for the weekend. We then went into Hamilton via Walmart to pick up welly boots for all the children (best $15 ever spent on a child) and onto the Fall Festival followed by pizza for lunch at Dinelli's.

Next stop, the Dismal Canyon for our walk through the mud, rivers and canyon itself - now you understand the welly boot purchase! The children had a blast, Tom especially loved tramping through the water and mud and climbing on any available surface. After all that it was back to our cabin for a well deserved glass of wine, bottle of beer, cup of tea, glass of water depending on who you were - can you work out who had what? The children had pepsi or water and then went off to play with the pea shooters they got at the fall festival.

After we had a bit of dinner and the Frantz's had gone back to Hamilton for trick or treating Nick, Tom & Lily went back to the canyon to see the resident Dismalites - little bugs that light up in the dark that are very rare and only found in a few places in the world (and I can't remember where they are! oops).

Forgot to mention Albert the cat, a resident of the canyon who spent quite a lot of time on our porch being petted by Tom, Lily & me all weekend, I especially enjoyed my Sunday morning coffee sitting out on the porch with Albert on my lap. After Nick and the kids went back in the canyon for a last poke about on Sunday morning we headed off to pick up Tim & Deanna and went off to see Natural Bridge for another walk, clamber, wade through mud and water.

Like I said, we had a lovely weekend and thankfully the drive home was uneventful.

There are about 60 more photos on my facebook page if you are interested.