On September 1, we went camping again. We went to one of our favorite spots. Cole ate his usual bag of chips. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. We took a small hike, played catch, shot the bow and arrow and let the boys run around.
On September 10, Grant did his belt testing for his yellow belt. He did a great job. He tested with his two friends, Blake and Wesley Ralston. Tyler has taken a new liking to baby dolls, spending lots of time dressing, undressing and feeding his doll.
Videos of Grant's belt testing:
On September 20, we attended the annual Mountain School Chili Cookoff. I brought my usual crockpot full of regular old chili and made a few loaves of cornbread. That morning before 8 AM I had made my batch of chili and 4 loaves of cornbread. The kids ran and played with their friends and Grant participated in the entertainment. Here are the videos of the performance:
On September 22, after Stake Conference we headed down toward Payson to try out another of the Flagstaff Hikes hikes. This one is called the Railroad Tunnel trail. It is a fairly challenging but luckily pretty short walk then climb to an abandoned partially blasted railroad tunnel. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. You can't see it from the road and when you're at this tunnel it's impossible to even imagine how someone planned to put a railroad there. The tunnel is fairly shallow as it was started in anticipation of the railroad and then abandoned when the railroad venture went bankrupt. You can climb all the way to the back of the tunnel. There is some pretty challenging up and down climbing to get to the tunnel. All of the boys made the climb really well. It was far more challenging than we anticipated and yet again we were in way over our heads with nothing to do but keep pushing through. I had to carry Tyler most of the way out toward the end. The adventure didn't end there as we decided to finish driving the Mogollon Rim road rather than backtracking. The drive was far longer than we thought and we ended up in Payson at about 8 PM. Our adventure started at about 1 and were thought we'd be home by 4 or 5. We had to make an unplanned dinner stop at McDonald's and finally made it home about 10 PM with five exhausted Mellens. Despite the "3 hour tour" it was a hike worth doing. Where else are you going to get to climb in an abandoned railroad tunnel?
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These are other cute pictures of the boys from the month.
Tyler kind of walks like Cam from Modern Family. I was trying to get a video of him doing the walk but he saw me and didn't like it. Here's my attempt:
http://youtu.be/8bGg_mhzq3Q
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