One more mountain story

Ok, I promise this is the last vacation story! :) Anyway, one morning Emma and I decided to go for a nature hike up the hill/mountain behind where we were staying. We left at 8:10 in the morning and it was gorgeous outside. We took two plastic grocery bags with us...one to collect rocks and leaves and one to tie at the top of the hill where the trail branches, so that we didn't get lost. :) So, we tied the bag at the top of the hill and decided to go "left". Emma stopped constantly and collected rocks, leaves and to step on mushrooms to see them "smoke." After about 40 minutes we decided to turn around and retrace our steps back to the bag we had tied.
I have no idea what happened but we must have missed the bag and we were TOTALLY LOST! We weren't even close to any houses or roads and the only sign of any life was this black donkey. We were literally climbing through people's property trying to figure out where we were.
After awhile Emma started to realize that maybe we weren't "in Kansas anymore." She kept saying "mom, are we lost?" And I kept reassuring her, "no Em, we're ok." Pretty soon she tripped and fell and began to cry that she was done hiking and wanted to go back to see daddy. I was actually starting to get a little panicky so I ended up carrying her for awhile. We started to retrace our steps and all of a sudden this chocolate lab comes running at us. I could hear people in the distance calling for him but I knelt down and was trying to coax him in our direction so the people would have to come our way. Thank God this really cute young couple that lives on the mountain came after their friendly lab. I humbly told them that we were actually quite lost and that I didn't even know the address of where we were staying. (how embarrasing) but I did tell them that I had tied a garbage bag at the top of the hill where our house was.
They said they had seen our bag and had just passed it a couple of hundred yards back on the trail. Wow, was my prayer answered because if it weren't for those people out for a hike poor Emma and I may have been in big trouble.
Anyway, I have never been so happy to see a plastic bag hanging from a tree. I just about cried. :) Anyway we got back at 10:15 and Dave said that he had gotten a little nervous since we were gone so long.
Believe it or not Emma wanted to go again later that day, but we took Dave and Lauren and did not get lost that time.

We got pictures done today at Portrait Innovations and they are fabulous! I will post some of them tomorrow.