hiking fun

macy's tages muter (day mother), esther, asked our family to go hiking with her family last weekend. the goal was to get to the waterfall in the town of bad urach. well, the kids were walking so slow that we didnt quite make it... but we did have a fun time all together!

much of our hike was through a beautiful horse farm...

the kids loved having all this wide open space to run- without cars!

i hiked with macy on my back- double the workout, right?

tate and macy both adore esther's nephew, max. so he came along with us all for the day too

we stopped next to this little pond. esther's dog, snoopy (a german sherpard!) and stormy went swimming, of course!

tate tried to skip stones...

here are our girls drying off

tate, macy and max

esther surprised us with a fireside lunch stop so we could grill some delicious brats all together!

 i did stop a few times to just take in the beauty that surrounded us...

tate and max at the end of our time together

we have been so thankful to have met esther and her wonderful family. since october, macy has spent 7.5 hours a week at her home, but she (and tate) would love to go more! they are such a loving, kind and generous family. esther has 4 children- late teen's and early 20 somethings. they love to be together as a family, even with all of their girlfriends/boyfriends joining in. you can tell they have fun and actually like and respect their parents. even on this day, 3 of the 4 kids came with us- each with their girlfriend/boyfriend. brian was so shocked that the boyfriends we just as nice as the kids!