Sandwiches Taste Better in the Mountains

We went hiking yesterday in the Wichita Mountains. We take these little family trips quite often, mainly to spend time together but also to get the kids away from the video games and tv for a whole day. Entertaining four teens and near teens in the wide open spaces is not easy. We only had the younger four with us because Rachel (Miss Pretty Princess) had to work. So the two teenage boys wanted to find someplace with mountains that they could actually climb and Emily wanted to climb with them. However, Beth, is NOT a climber. She would have preferred to sit in the air conditioned van for the entire time that we were there. However, she did not. Instead she stuck to me and Derek like a leech and followed us right along the little trails - chatting about every single thing that she saw along the way.

We ended up hiking around French Lake and down the creek. It was beautiful ! The flowers were blooming, the wind was blowing just enough that it wasn't hot out, and the kids didn't push each other into the lake (always a bonus). They even liked the lunch that we packed. Derek and I laughed about it. If we had told them at home that we were going to have dry ham and cheese sandwiches on stale hamburger buns with Chex Mix as a side item, graham crackers for dessert, and water to drink they would have whined and complained for hours on end. Evidently sandwiches taste better when you eat them in the back of a mini van parked in a tiny parking lot in the mountains after hiking. They actually wanted "seconds" and fought over the bottles of water. Go figure ! Maybe we should eat all of our meals in the mountains. That's it ! The next time we go hiking I am packing Spinach Ravioli with mixed vegetables on the side ! Let's see how that taste in the mountains.