A Winter (sort of) Walk

The other day the girls and I were sitting around wondering what to do. I said, lets go for a walk. Everyone bundled up and we headed out to the open space near our house. It turns out, although it is December in Colorado, it isn't that cold. Everyone was sweating and I ended up carrying 3 coats about half way through the walk. We had a great time and found some fun treasures.

Snails were one of the treasures we found. Here is a close up of one and Tilly holding another one between her fingers.

Different colored glass was another treasure. Josie found all of these and sorted them by color.

Izzy created a special meditation place for herself.

Bike Ride

On Monday after school we decided to go for a bike ride to our local community garden. We rode bikes through town and had to cross a pretty busy road to get there. As we were leaving I saw a bike path and decided we would try to ride that back home so we wouldn't have to cross that street again. I had no idea where it went but I was hoping it hooked up with the Coal Creek Trail that goes by our house. Well, 5 miles and a stop in the creek later, we got home. The kids did great on the ride and had a lot of fun.

Trout release field trip

Last Friday, I joined Mae's class for a field trip to Lake Cachuma, our local reservoir that is over the mountains about 30 minutes from town. Our goal was to safely release rainbow trout that had been growing in their classroom for the past 5 weeks. Choosing the perfect spot.
Saying goodbye. Each child had written a poem that the teacher (in yellow) read out loud to everyone. It was very sweet.

Lucy came with us as did another little sister. They had a great time.

Lake water starting to mix in with the water in the bucket of trout. Can't rush this process. Gotta make sure the trout are comfortable.

They were pretty slow to venture out of the bucket, but they did and they all swam away, hopefully to some protected spot away from bigger fish and birds.

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Just in case anyone is wondering, I'm still loving not working. Summer should be a blast!

More Day 2

A few miles north of Clam Beach is the Lady Bird Johnson Grove in Redwood National Park. We've stopped here before, it is a very special place. There is a 1 mile trail that wanders through some freakin' dang big trees.
These usually tall kids look positively shrimpy next to these giants.

An almost-all-three-smiling picture.

Later on that day we stopped at the Oregon Sand Dunes. It was pretty cold, at least I was cold, but that didn't stop the kids from sledding (on plastic cafeteria trays) down the dunes.

Yes, Lucy is barefoot.

I thought this shot was pretty cool, we're all in it.

Hey, another almost-all-three-smiling picture. At least the lighting was good.

After the sun set, we piled back in the car and drove about 3 hours up to Portland, where the Kennedy School was waiting for us.

The last of the smoke

Here is another shot of the smoke during sunset from our backyard. It looks a lot closer than it was. As of today, the fire is much farther west and only a few ranches are at risk. We haven't seen smoke like this since Saturday.
This is picture of our new truck. Well, Henry's new truck.
From another angle.
And from my angle. He was like this for 10 minutes at least and took about 15 pictures. Funny.

Tadpoles!

We received this frog habitat about four years ago as a Christmas present. Everyone was very excited. We sent in the coupon for tadpoles and put them in as soon as they arrived. Something wasn't quite right, however, because after 10 months, they were still tadpoles (healthy, but not frogs).We tried again the next year with local tadpoles from the creek. It worked! Last year there was not enough water in the creek for tadpoles, but this year there is.
So we went hunting again and came home with 7 tadpoles. I think they are pacific tree frogs, but it is hard to tell at this point. I don't think this habitat can support 7 frogs. I'm hoping that the bigger ones turn into frogs quickly so we can release them freeing up space for the little ones.
This is the biggest one. It is about 1" long, tail included. I'm amazed by these little guys. They're kind of like caterpillars turning into butterflies, but you can actually watch the transformation. Cool.

Spring!

We decided to take a drive up into the mountains today to look for wildflower. The weather was perfect, the skies were clear and boy, oh boy did we succeed. The views were amazing.

We found a lovely spot by a creek for lunch.

And Henry caught this lizard.

Don't worry, he's (or she) is just playing dead. We let him go after taking his picture. He promptly ran under our car, and of course, we (Henry) had to crawl under there and make sure he was out of the way before we drove off.

After lunch we found some amazing wild flowers. This is the state flower of California, the golden poppy and a lupine.

I've been resisting posting the spring flower pictures I've taken because I realize some of you aren't there yet. This field left me no choice.

I mean really, this is just fabulous.

Now that you've seen this, I don't think a few wisteria or peach blossoms will hurt, will it? I'll put those pictures on next.

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Happy Spring!

sunday sunset

As customary, when Chance is heading out to the airport, we all go out on the front lawn to say goodbye. Tonight we brought out some blankets and enjoyed the beauty of the Colorado sky. As you can imagine the picture doesn't do it justice. It was amazing!