wordless wednesday: mountain style

i discovered that my super duper iphone4 has a better lens on it than my 3-year old digital camera.  which was great news to learn, since it's with me at all times and i now can snap fairly impressive (at least for me, anyway) photos at a moment's notice without lamenting that my aforementioned canon is in the car with a dead battery. 

this came in handy while we spent six glorious days in the north carolina mountains with our dear friends the basses over the 4th of july weekend.  we hiked, biked, ran, built a campfire, roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, set off our very own fireworks that were purchased in our neighboring state south carolina (which apparently does not care as much about the safety of its residents as our restrictive tarheel state), went gem mining, cheered on the sidelines of two parades, went tubing down the river, sat on the back porch and witnessed the most glorious thunderstorms roll in, and did lots of other things that i'm probably forgetting but will remember as soon as i upload my pictures.  because i have my camera with me at all times, you see, because it's actually my phone.  a modern-day marvel, i tell ya.

armed with the map, our fearless leader susanna blazed the trail on our hike 





there were actually nine of us on our hike -- marshall found a worm friend who hitched a ride on his cowboy hat 

 we found a beautiful gazebo for a picnic lunch, and made sure to reserve our sandwich crusts for the ducks

we stationed ourselves at the very end of the parade route in blowing rock.  to pass the time while we waited, a rousing game of duck-duck-goose was in order

seems the mountain air was a bit too chilly for the slip-and-slide for susanna.  on a completely different note, please take this opportunity to marvel at the clarity of this picture (notice those water droplets!) and remind yourself that these were all taken by a phone

susanna and marshall were inseparable.  they'd walk out the front door and we'd find them hours later, pretending they were on a "journey" with pretend backpacks and a treasure map, or with long sticks for light sabers as they played star wars

we enjoyed our very own fireworks show every night, courtesy of bill and his pyrotechnic talents.  he was kind to allow liam to help him set one off

 this is liam holding a sparkler BEFORE he decided to bring it close to his face to see if he could "feel its warmth"

visiting our old friend petunia the pot-bellied pig

waiting for the second parade of the weekend -- the "liberty parade" in todd -- otherwise known as the liberal parade

see what i mean?

the kids enjoyed a cold drink following the parade.  of particular note is liam's chin wound ... remember how our academically-gifted child held a sparkler to his face?

 

a rare photo of the four adults, taken by liam

hanging out with a friendly man in boone, after a trip to the candy barrel at mast general store, of course

while we mined for gems, liam found this rock, convinced it was a diamond

sadly, it was not a diamond ... BUT when the kids learned about the rocks they'd mined, he learned that he found the only sapphire they'd seen that day!  i'm still figuring out what i want to do with it

enjoying our umpteenth packed picnic of the weekend on our way home, using an outside table at hardee's where we bought nothing (but used their nasty restroom)

i'm still kind of amazed we fit six people and all of our luggage into our SUV ... of course, we did have to wedge a big bag of trash in between marshall and susanna until we found a dumpster, but they didn't seem to mind

and a good time, as they say, was had by all.