Our Cave Adventure

We recently took a trip to see my brother's family.  While we were there they took us to a local cave.  Getting up to the cave meant hiking up dangerous rocky cliffs.  It made this Mom a bit of a nervous wreck as we were climbing.  We had 8 children with us ranging from 2 months to 9 years old.  Most of them under the age of 5.

I held Matthew tightly as we climbed.  Elizabeth discovered she would rather be in her Daddy's arms after she saw the edge of the cliffs.  She had a death grip on his neck.  My eyes never strayed far from Caleb or Timothy who both like to be a bit more adventurous than I would like them to be. 

This is all of the children except Matthew.

This is the view from the cave.  It was a breathtaking view, but one that I could not linger in as we had children running around in the cave. 

This was a narrow passageway the children walked through.  It was at the edge of the cliff.  We had to have 2 adults to help the children safely navigate this passage.  

You can see on the older 2 boys how short it was.  They had to bend down so they wouldn't bump their heads.

Very near the opening of the end of the passageway was this cliff.  Gregory stood on this side of the path to prevent any missteps that could have happened had someone stepped the wrong way.  Needless to say, Matthew and I did not walk through the passageway.  Just looking at this picture makes my heart beat fast!

 Apparently the journey up to the cave wasn't exciting enough for my Marine brother so he decided to take an even an even more perilous route back.  As soon as those of us who are more sane saw where he was going we chose to return the way we originally came.  As the numbers dwindled it was only John and Timothy braving the uphill cliff alone.   Those two fearless guys are a matched pair.  I breathed with a sigh of relief when we all ended our journey safely.  

What a fun adventure we had that we will be able to reminisce over for years to come.  Thanks John and Kelly!