Friday, October 08, 2010

Cherry Creek Trail

Today I wanted to take the kids for a little hike, which really was a little walk, and so we ended up choosing the trail called Cherry Creek.  It is just outside of town and the path wanders around a couple of ponds that have ducks and geese in them, as well as green and purple slime and snails.  The kids were very excited to find snails, but the shells were mostly empty.  I guess that is why they were floating on the top of the water, which you will see in one of the pictures below!  We also took a couple of paths that led to the river and so we had the pleasure of some bushwacking.  Some of the grass we walked through was about 6 feet tall, which made it really fun for the kids to run through....as long as we could still hear them! :)  We ended up hiking a little over 2 miles and it was just perfect for the kids!




The fence which we passed through to get to the trail



See the white round things in the middle....those are snails!  See the green stuff....that is green mossy slime, that I had to stick my hand in and pick out those little snail shells!   :)


Emma holding her prized possesion, when a little visitor popped out of the shell!  We are not quite certain what the little creature was, but we will be doing more research on it to be sure.






In great contemplation over the river!



Sharing the boardwalk



Thursday, October 07, 2010

Horseback Riding the Open Plains!

A few weeks ago Emma, Madison, my mom, and Tom a friend of ours, went riding.  They had wide open fields in front of them and saw lots of wildlife!  The girls are having such a fun time with their grandma and the horses.  Today Grandma left for a few days and left Emma in charge of feeding the horses!  She felt so grown up!!  Both of the girls are learning lots about horses and how to ride.  Heidi, and Mason would like to be on the horses more, but they don't hold on well enough yet! 








Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Hiking to Grotto Falls

On Saturday morning my sister, her boss, and I went for a hike so we could take pictures of these cute little animals called pika.  The hike was 3 miles round trip and we found plenty to photograph!  I just got a new camera a few weeks ago that allows me to play with the manual settings a lot more and so now I am learning all kinds of new things!  I am having a blast taking pictures, but I definitely need some more lessons before we head out on our BIG trip so I can capture all that we see the way I want to!  So these pictures were taken to practice using all the different settings that I can use, like aperature, shutter speed, and ISO along with changing lenses.   There is so much to learn!!!



















A Pika!






Grotto Falls