Hocking Hills Vacation!

We had a wonderful time this past weekend on our "mini vacation" to Hocking Hills! Robin and Larry kept Orion so this was our first time being away from him for an extended period of time! We missed him, but we had a great time and he got to have his own adventures with his grandparents :)


We stayed at "Caveman Retreats" right down the road from all the caves/attractions. Our campsite was gorgeous! The bathrooms... not so much. Kinda scary, actually. But hey, we didn't let that ruin our fun!


We just set up camp and relaxed when we got there Thursday night, and then on Friday we spent the day hiking! We went to Old Man's cave and did a little Geocaching- we found 2 out of 3 :)


While Geocaching we met a beautiful (but grumpy) Great horned owl and a friendly red tailed hawk with one wing! We didn't find the geocache that was supposed to be nearby but we loved just hanging out so close to these beautiful birds.



Next we went to the Rock House which was soooo cool. It's the only true cave in Hocking Hills and it's awesome. It was dark in there so most of my pictures didn't turn out... you'll just have to go and see it for yourself :)

On Saturday we went into downtown Logan first thing in the morning. We got hot drinks and did some wandering. One store that was closing had everything 50% off and I got a pair of Ugg style boots made of real sheepskin for an awesome price! They are SOOO warm and cozy- can't wait to wear them this winter!

We also stopped at an antique store and had fun looking around at the treasures.


Next we went to a glass bead making class!! It was super cool. I was so nervous at the beginning (um, working with a blowtorch and molten glass!!), but once I got the hang of it I had a lot of fun. All those sticks you see on the table are rods of glass that you melt and use to make beads.


Nathan went next- he wasn't as nervous as me because he'd gotten to watch both our teacher and me do it ;) I think he also did a better job than I did!


Our finished beads! Nathan's are on the left, mine on the right. We made a dot pattern, a heart pattern, and a wavy line pattern. So cool!


That night we had dinner... at a castle. Yes, really. This is Ravenwood Castle near Hocking Hills. We came early to wander the grounds (they have a little village of tiny houses that you can rent... and even a couple gypsy wagons!). We were going to play on the giant chess board, but it was taken, so we played normal sized checkers and a game called Rapunzel's Revenge... just because it sounded ridiculous.


The grand dining room. There was a big stone fireplace and a cool storybook mural. We sat at a table with 3 other couples...I didn't know how to feel about that at first but it ended up being really nice! And the food was delicious :)


On Sunday morning we went horseback riding!! It's something I've always wanted to do but never gotten to. It was really fun... we actually rode up and down a mountain which was kind of scary at times (my horse tripped pretty bad a couple times!). Nathan's horse, Cherokee, was a one-eyed, slow, stubborn horse. Mine was named Tabasco and was very good. I would definitely like to try riding again someday!


We agreed that this was our best vacation yet :)

Romance and Adventure

Romance novels, that is. No, it's not what you think!! I promise you I didn't read any of them... no thank you.

My friend Kayla is working at a new bookstore (a lot like Half Price Bookstore, but prettier :) called Chapters. They opened today, so Nathan and I went in yesterday to help with the last minute scramble to get everything ready! Nathan did some odd jobs including working on some cool old chairs (he removed the icky old fabric from the underside, which we're also going to replace next week). Kayla and I had the overwhelming task of organizing the books from three of the biggest romance novel authors.

These are the books from just one of the authors (below). Looking at them all jumbled on the shelves was so confusing so we pulled them off, stacked them by book (there were several copies of most of them), then reshelved them by series and alphabet. Whew!!

Before:


After! So pretty :) I think the series all have labels on the shelves now too!


After that we went to Andrew's for dinner, then he, Cliff, and we went out Geocaching (what else?). Andrew's the one who introduced us to Geocaching, which I so rudely failed to mention in my last entry. We mostly stayed in a park in Lebanon. One of the caches was supposed to be really big and have a lot of cool stuff in it, so we started hunting! OK, now picture being in a woods something like this...
...in the dark. With HUGE sheer cliffs and MOUNTAINS popping up out of nowhere now and then. Whaaaat?? Needless to say, it was quite an adventure. We ended up finding it though, and it was really cool. And then of course we found out that there was a MUCH easier way to get there. Hm. Oh well, we really did have fun :)

I also found this!

It's a Geocoin, which I didn't know existed until Andrew showed me one yesterday. There are lots of different kinds, but this is the specific one that I found yesterday. It's got a tracking number on it that you enter online when you find it, so you can see where it's been! This one started in North Carolina and its desired destination is British Columbia. I think that's pretty darn cool :) We're going to take it with us when we visit Rachel in Indiana next weekend and drop it off in another Geocache.

Tonight I have Late Night Girls Night with my friend Amanda and some other ladies (wooo!), then tomorrow is the Twins sale (like the Moms' Market), some kind of mysterious half-birthday surprise for me (!), and Parents' Night Out (Youth ministry activity. We're helping.). Sunday is Church, a scavenger hunt at Jungle Jim's with our Sunday School class, church again. BUSY!!!