Day two of fall break consisted of playing at home all day together, a little piano and a little soccer, and a sweet meal with friends (oh, what a cheesecake!). We went to bed early so we'd be ready for...
Day three!
Or what we were hoping would feel like a "vacation in a day" for the family to Turner Falls. We started it off right by grabbing a little coffee and a bite to eat on our way out of town...bonus points for the first Normanite to recognize where we were! Or maybe you could guess without a picture even?

We drove south about an hour and found the most lovely spot--how we've never been here before is a mystery to me. Turner Falls is beautiful, but the park around it is equally gorgeous, and there's this super fun creek to play in, and an old rock castle to explore...everything was fun! We left the house in the pouring rain, with a forecast for more to come--but we decided to brave it anyway and so we just packed extra clothes and rain gear and this worked out perfectly. The weather was great--not much rain, but enough to keep the bugs away and to keep the temperature absolutely delightful and to keep loads of people from joining us. It was like we had the park to ourselves.



Renne really enjoyed her first hiking experience, we think. She slept through most of it, but we took that as a good sign. :)
(I made this hat for her this week and I love it! I'll have to share a real picture of it (this one's from the hipstamatic app on my iphone) so you can see the colors of the yarn--it's perfect for her.)
Ilo also enjoyed hiking--attached to Dad! We couldn't let him down much since we didn't bring enough changes of clothes for our proximity to water and ilo's tendency to bolt towards it at high speeds.

We hiked around the top of the falls and then climbed down alongside it to get to the "beach" at the bottom. It's clearly a great little swimming hole in the summer time, but it was empty for the winter...

But how could we resist? Well, somehow Matt and I managed to (no change of clothes was our excuse--never mind that it was cold enough to be wearing pants and long sleeves...) but we said yes to the little ones taking a dip.


Good thing we brought extra clothes, eh?!
We had such fun together, and all of us are excited to go back with more time and gear to play in the creek for the day.
To round out our "vacation in a day", we stopped at the Bedre chocolate factory in Paul's Valley, OK, where we got a little tour of them making chocolate, while the sweet ladies there fed us samples of their famous chocolate-covered Pringles. Yep, you read that correctly! Yikes! We each picked out a little piece of chocolate to eat after our late lunch at Rodney's Pizza in Purcell, OK. We've been wanting to try out their "famous" pizza for a while, and it was great. The kids liked it since Rodney came out of the back and gave them all a quarter. Perfect, since we were sitting 5 feet from one of those little candy machines that take quarters...
We got home late in the afternoon just in time for a little nap and then popcorn for dinner and family movie night--Shaun, the Sheep. It was really a delightful day!
Sometimes it's so hard to just plan and prepare and get out the door for a little trip, but we were so glad we did. We'd all recommend Turner Falls if you live in the area and haven't been there!