Sad little lake

We went to a nearby lake for hiking, geocaching and duck-feeding after school one day. 

This was a sad, dehydrated little lake. We had never seen it this low! The whole state of California and much of the West Cost is having a major drought right now. This is usually our wet season, with green hills and wildflowers and water in the creeks and rivers. But it is all dead and dry and brown. We've been praying hard for rain, and yesterday we all fasted as well. We were so happy to get half an inch of rain. It's a start!

There was a multicache there, which means they post the coordinates of the first one, and that tells you the coordinates for the next one. Kind of like a treasure hunt.

 This was cool: inside the cache was a little puzzle. We had to put it together to get the coordinates.

They were written on the back. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find the next one. 

 It's a fun little hike around the lake. Brennan found the next geocache (not part of the multicache).

  

 It was in this tree. Some places are just made for hiding a geocache.

Towards the end of the hike, we stopped to feed the ducks. 

I've been wanting to take Chloe there for awhile. I knew she would love it!

 In fact everyone had a blast, and we were sad when the bread ran out.

At first Levi was very scared. I thought he was afraid of the ducks, but it turned out he didn't like a cat that was lurking nearby. Once the boys chased it away, he did fine. You just never know with this one.

Tyler did great helping Chloe so I could take pictures.

Interesting story. To the left of where we were feeding the ducks was a ton of mud. I warned the boys several times to stay out of it. When we were just about done (probably right after I took this picture of Dallin), Tyler pointed out a dead bird nearby. Naturally, Dallin wanted to get a closer look, so he ran right into the mud. When I saw him there, I yelled, "Dallin, get out of the mud!" He tried to run out, but he was really stuck. Up to that point, he didn't even realize he was in mud. Now it was halfway up his legs, and he had to crawl out. I was so upset - he was a total mess, and he was wearing brand new shoes.  It put me in a bad mood, and I yelled at everyone to head back to the car. I sat in the car fuming while he tried his best to clean himself up, and then I had the thought that this would make a good testimony. Dallin loves to talk in church and is always trying to come up with an object lesson from his life. As I pointed this out to Dallin, my attitude totally changed. What did the mud represent? Satan's traps. The dead bird was temptation. He said he didn't even see the mud because he was so focused on the dead animal. He tried to wash off his shoes when we got home, but he couldn't get all the mud off. I told him to put them in the washing machine, and they came out looking brand new again. We related this to the atonement. After we sin, we need the atonement of Jesus Christ to make us clean again. I'm thankful Heavenly Father taught me that lesson right when I needed it.