Terror in the park

No not a cheesy horror movie that I saw. A real story! Two weeks ago we went picnicking and hiking at a state park with my parents and sister/brother-in-law. The kids played on the playground near the picnic area while we set out food. We ate a delicious lunch of cold fried chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad and fruit. After lunch we decided to go for a hike around one of the lakes. Darling husband carried Biscuit in the backpack carrier, Matilda, Bella, Uncle with niece in other backpack carrier, Poppy and myself set off. We saw so many cool things on our hike. To name a few: mushrooms of every color and size, turtles, fish, remains of beaver gnawings, a snake, wild blackberries. As we were about done with the hike Darling Husband and Matilda were walking in the front about 10 feet ahead of everyone else. From this point on everything happened so quickly I really have no clue what it looked like. Matilda turned around and stepped off the trail. She fell down a steep bank about 7 feet to the lake. I couldn't see how deep the lake was so immediately slid down the bank also. By the grace of God the lake there was very shallow, a few inches of water and muck. She was absolutely terrified. I can still hear her terrified scream. I lifted Matilda up to Poppy. There were no hand holds. I was wondering how I was going to get up. Poppy and Darling Husband were able to pull me up. There were some benches a few feet ahead on the trail. We sat down and hugged Matilda and gave her a little water to sip. We rinsed her arms off a bit and looked her over. She had not a scratch on her. We finished the hike and walked back to the van. We stopped at the campground and they let us use the showers to wash Matilda off. I changed her clothes and wiped myself down. Unfortunately, I had no other clothing! Extremely scary! I am so grateful that God was watching over us and didn't allow something worse to happen. There are plenty of places around the lake that are much deeper. We went back to the picnic area where Nanny and Auntie were. Nanny held Matilda for a bit and gave her something to eat. She went and played on the playground with Bella. They both wanted to play in the little creek by the playground. I took them down so they could dip their feet in. It was very shallow and cool. A nice ending to an exciting day.