Tuesday, July 14, 2009

A weekend in Murphys

This weekend we were lucky enough to go visit some of our favorite people, Kevin and Linda, at their new home in Murphys, CA. Murphys is a small mountain town about an hour past Jackson on Highway 49. It is absolutely beautiful! And as an added bonus, our former associate pastor and his amazing wife live there and invited us to stay with them this weekend. They both have very special places in our hearts, they were with us through Drew's last heart surgery, were great friends to us and our kids love them and have adopted them as surrogate grandparents. After this weekend I miss them even more!

Anyway, we started our visit with a picnic lunch that we brought to White Pines Lake. We ate in a park near a playground and the kids had fun swinging and climbing and occasionally eating. After lunch we took the canoe out on the lake. Dan and Kevin bravely took both kids with them on the first trip out. Then Linda and I went by ourselves, to make sure we could handle it before bringing any kids with us. We decided to only take one at a time! It was a lot of fun and we found a little family of Canadian geese to go visit.







After we had enough canoeing, we visited Big Trees State Park, only about a ten minute drive from the lake. The giant sequoias in the park are thought to be as old as 2000 years! They are huge! There are various trails in the park and we choose to do the shortest and easiest, about 1.5 miles. Somewhere along the way, I was struck by the fact that Drew was walking the trail by himself. Something he could not have done when we first met Kevin and Linda, before he had his surgery. He amazes me! It started to rain on us about halfway through the trail, but there was nothing to do but keep going. It was actually kind of fun!

When we got back to the cars we headed home to Kevin & Linda's house and everyone got cleaned up. We had a yummy dinner of bbq chicken, corn and salad with peach pie for dessert, of course! Then we took a long walk through the golf course that they live on (and I forgot to tell Dan to bring his clubs!). The kids looked for abandoned golf balls and found lots of them! We also found a lot of baby frogs and Ava loved having me catch them for her so she could hold them. After all that walking and playing we were exhausted! We all slept well that night!










The next morning we got to join Kevin and Linda at Sierra Bible Church, where he is the interim pastor. The church is totally different from our church, with mostly older people and hardly any families with young children. But everyone was so friendly, introducing themselves and chatting with us. It was a very nice church. Afterwards we had lunch with Linda at a nearby diner (Kevin had a meeting) and the food was great! We headed home to Sacramento with full tummies and hearts. Thank you Kevin and Linda for hosting us. We love you guys!



8 comments:

Linda said...

OK...I'm teary after all those wonderful photos and memories. We did have a great time with your family! Let us know options for a return visit...during the week? on a weekend? Let's plan!

DeAnna said...

Sounds like and awesome weekend! I love big trees too, it is an awesome park!

Frizzy said...

What a great weekend! Loved seeing those pictures. I'll have to get some info from you so we can go some of those places with Yaya. Love the pics of the kids in the huge trees! Miss you and our Bible Study group.

Carey said...

Looks like a fun trip! Great pictures too. :)

The Portas said...

What a very meaningful and fun time with friends! How awesome to have such warm, welcoming people like that in your lives. And I'm sure they feel the same about your family!

I loved the pics. Looks like it was a wonderful time.

my life: said...

So fun!!! I love these pics!!!

Unknown said...

It was great to have you with us. Thanks for making the drive. The pie is gone, but the salsa and jam live on!! Ava's baby is riding in Mitch's truck for the next couple days but should show up for church on Sunday. We love you guys!

Leslie said...

how COOL are those trees??!?!