My 1st actual family blog post

Welcome to the fast and the furious Roberts family. We are always on the move as you will see. We are a family of 5. Matt, Jasmine, Brytni, Jayde, and Ashlyn. Yes, my poor husband is stuck in a house full of girls. I keep telling him he can change that aspect of things, but he must like girls a little too much. Besides for that fact little girls steal their daddies hearts! I stay at home with my girls and it can be quite a challenge sometimes. My oldest is the best helper in the world, but also thinks she knows all, my middle child is our princess, but is also the whiniest of them all, and our youngest is just ALL OVER THE PLACE constantly, but she makes the cutest faces which tends to get her out of trouble.

Father's day was this last weekend and all of us, and I mean all of us by my family and Matt's sister's family of 6 kids and her and her husband meandered up 36th street street up past Harrison to go hiking. We were hiking up along the trail just fine. We came across a rock climbing wall that the shiriff's department uses for training purposes. Matt and a few others decided it would be fun to climb and other's thought it was a good time to take a rest. It was facinating watching them all climb up that wall. Even I climbed up partially and felt like I was going to fall off! That and you definately need gloves to climb up and down the handles hurt your hands. We stopped a few times at misc bridges and things like that. The hike up was great. Successful at not getting hurt.

You will find that I am a MAJOR picture aholic and I will post several pics with each post. Now on with the story! Successful at not getting hurt on the way up. Everything was going great! Everyone was getting along and nobody tried to fall off the mountain side at all. We guess we got pretty close to the top where the waterfall was. We all stopped for rest and realized that the sun was starting to set. A few of the older kids decided to go up ahead and see how much further it was to the top. Man, kids sure do have a lot of energy, and lot more adrenaline to run off. Us adults got to talking and decided that Matt and Chris would take the little ones on down the trail before it go too late and would be hiking down in the dark. So off they go leaving Anabelle and me sitting on the log waiting for the older kids to come back down. Time had gone by and we

were still waiting. Finally they come back down and off we head down the trail. Not more than 5 mins down the trail I slip on some loose rock and end up loosing control and go running down the trail looking for a way to stop myself. Next thing I know I see a gully of trees and knew I was going for it if I couldn't get myself to stop. Finally I see a rock about the size of a mid size stump. I thought quickly and crouched down as fast as I could and braced myself for a full on blow to the body. I put my hands out first and they caught me and then the rest of my body hit impact. Needless to say I have some bruises on my inner thighs from it. The bruise on my one hand is gone now, thank goodness. Now that I am no longer speeding down the hill, we continue walking. I would say not more than 5 mins later I slip on some more lose rock and pratically do the splits and hear a large pop in my ankle. There I am with my left leg in front of me, and my right leg bent behind me, and me holding and cradling my right knee from the shock of pain. I get brave, tell myself I am fine and get up and start walking. I was thinking to myself that I could walk it off and things would be fine. My positive mental thought worked great! I only had a few twinges and I was good to go! We get about 5 more mins
down the trail and Anabelle gets a text from her husband asking us where we are. Not more than a mere 30 seconds later we hear his voice and child crying. We were like, "cool! We caught up with them!" We come around the bend and see Matt hold Ashlyn in his arms and she is just crying. Matt comes up to me and tells me that she had fallen into a cactus. I was like, "oh nice!" She wants her mama and I take her and she has cactus needles all up her right side. Chris and Matt had already taken off her shoes and skirt and were pulling out as many needles as they could in the dusk light. Finally we realize that we just needed to get down the mountain and home into the light to see more. Matt the great father that he is took Ash and just started booking it down the mountain. Partially down he realized that he too was getting needles in his hands and realized that they were all over her shirt. We stripped her shirt off and I took my over shirt off to keep her covered since it was getting cold and she was showing signs of shivers. It took us about another 45 mins to

get down the rest of the trail. We got down the trail just as it was almost dark. We get Ash into the car and drive home as fast as we could without her screaming at the top of her lungs. We kept talking to her about different things and the one thing she kept asking for was Candy and that she was hungry. Anabelle said that she head somewhere that bakign soda and water would help take out the needles. We got home and the first thing we did was mix some up. We laid her on the floor where everyone proceeded to gather around and start pasting her with baking soda. We had her lay there and let it dry or until it would peel off. She hated all of the attention. Above all of the baking soda you could see needles poking out of it that we had to pull out with tweezers.
Once the baking soda flaked off it took all of the very fine needles out but there were pletny of big ones poking out of her skin. We gave her some catnip and fennel to help her to relax and to start to fall asleep so we could get to the needles without her freaking out. It didn't quite work in our favor, but we managed to get a good amount of them out. She still has some in her legs but she doesn't seem to be bothered by them. She knows that they are there and wont let anyone touch them. Now we just wait for those dang'd needles to come out. I hope they out by her birthday that way they don't all show up in her pics on Sunday. Which I will be making a cake for and will post then! TTFN!