A Birthday and One Crazy Adventure!!

Well I was going to post some pictures, but am having some technical difficulties. Saturday was Ben's 34th birthday!!! Man we are getting old. I want to tell you how he spent his birthday. Jarrett, McGregor, and Ben went on a father and son camp out Friday night and were going to come home Saturday late morning. After breakfast they decided to hike to these rocks and play on them for awhile, my Bishop and his 3 young sons met them up there. Ben and the Bishop decided to hike to the top of the mountain. It was a lot steeper than they had thought, so they were going to go down a different, easier way. When they got to the top they realized they couldn't go back down the way they came and they couldn't get to the trail they wanted. So the hike began. Two dad, two 9 yrs old, a 5 yr old, a 4yr old, a 3 yr old, and 2 deacons with no water, food, or sunscreen(poor McGregor). Everywhere they went they either had huge cliffs or massive boulders. It was in the mid 90s Saturday so you can imagine how thirsty you would get. They cut open a cactus and ate it. Ben said it tasted a lot like a bell pepper. After about 3 hours the Bishops father-in-law found them and he had 2 gallons of water. I don't know how he found them but he did. They still had 3 hours to go. At one point they stopped and said a prayer that they would have the courage and faith to get through this adventure. Right after that they climbed down a 30 foot cliff. They had one of the adults at the top, one down the cliff in the middle, and one at the bottom. Then they proceeded to hand the kids down one at a time. Finally they found a spring coming out of the mountain and got some more water in them. After 6 hours and the rest of our ward led a search they made it back to camp tired, sore, thirsty, and sunburned. From what I hear from everyone involved in the hike or the search it was a pretty scary thing. They were within minutes of calling search and rescue. I am so thankful that everyone made it home safe, it could have turned out really bad. I am thankful I had no idea any of this was going on until after it was over. I get sick to my stomach when Ben tells me some of the things they had to do to get down off this mountain. So happy birthday to Ben, I am just glad he made it home and we got to celebrate his birthday a little that evening.