A Beautiful Day for a Hike

A few weekends ago, Pat and I had a hankering to go on a hike. Since the friends we were staying with had the same idea, we all went together :) We went to a place called Ross lake and it was just gorgeous! It is days and moments like this that I am so grateful for living in such a beautiful part of our country. All the pictures taken in this post were taken with my new iPhone and I'm not sure why they are so washed out :(

We are pretty fortunate that our kids love to hike as well. They still talk about their favorite hike so far which was to Idaho Peak last summer ( you can check out that excursion HERE ) Gabe was my little hiking buddy so there are quite a few pics of him and the girls stayed way up front with our friend who is a super fast hiker (the fact that she has legs up to her armpits might possibly be a reason why she is so fast ;)

This huge boulder was right beside the trail so Pat and the kids had to conquer it! Stella really really wanted to join them. :)

Awwww family photo op :) When we got to the lake we took off our shoes and waded in the nice cool water. I should mention that it was a really really hot day in the low 30s so it was especially nice to have this pretty alpine lake to cool off in.

And of course we had to have a snack, trail mix of course! My little guy was so cute perched on a rock with his bare feet and his trail mix I couldn't resist sharing this pic.

Part of the hike was to pick our way through the bottom of this old rock slide. I thought it looked pretty cool so I told the hubby to go pose for me :)

And last but not least I had to share this picture to give you all some idea of how high up we were. This is only about half way up the drive part of the day and the hike was about 45 minutes each way ( I think).

All in all it was a great hike and a lovely day, I'm really glad that we are having such gorgeous weather after the extremely wet spring we had!

Have you been on any good hikes lately? Do you like hiking or hate it? Enjoying some gorgeous weather?

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas around here...

First off was this little guy making his first appearance on December 1st. He apparently decided the fireplace mantel was a good place to start his observations :)

On Sunday we went out and found our Christmas tree. Behind our backyard is all crown land, a whole mountain of it, so we just hiked up there and found our trees. Yes, I said trees :) this year we decided to have a few, one big family tree and a few mini trees for the bedrooms. Should be interesting....

The kids found a nice little sledding hill to slide down on our way :) We have so little snow right now, I sure hope we have a few good dumps of it before Christmas.

Pat, Cady and Gabe cutting down one of the mini trees :)

Gabe helped daddy cut down the family tree...

And here it is in it's new home. Isn't it nice and straight and pretty? I picked it out :) Trees are so deceiving in the outdoors, they look way smaller outside and then we usually get them inside and they are huge! But after four years here we've got our system down pretty good and this years is a good one (in my humble opinion).

Monday when the girls got home from school we decided to decorate it. Pat has been working tues-saturday so he gets monday off instead and we all had a good time rediscovering all the ornaments. There were lots of exclamations of, " I remember this one! I made this one in grade ....." or " So and so gave us this one!" Our tree doesn't have a theme or colour scheme really, but if I buy ornaments I try and keep it to red or silver. The tree is full of decorations made by the kids, myself, ornaments given to us as kids (some of them are 30 yrs old!) a real mish mash of everything, but I love it. It has such a personal feeling to it. Don't get me wrong, I love the themed and colour coordinated trees I see, but for us, this works.
 

Sorry this one's so blurry, but I just love the look of concentration on Gabe's face as he tries to hang one of the ornaments.

And here it is in all its decorated glory! Well, actually it looks a lot more sparse in pictures than in real life. hmmm have to try and remedy that.

The stuff under the tree is actually our playmobil nativity set. I was looking around for a good surface to put it on and must have got distracted cause next time I looked, this is where I found it. And you know what? I think it's perfect there :) I love hearing the kids play with it, I hear things like, "hey let's have a birthday party for Jesus and invite some friends over for him!"  Looks like there's an outdoor party going on cause no one's home at the stable :)

And of course Dora's watching all the comings and goings from her "hangout" in the tree :)

How about you? Are things looking a little Christmassy around your place? Do you buy a tree or go out and find your own? Check back later this week and I'll be sharing lots more Christmas fun! On December 15th at the Nesting Place I'm planning to link up for her Christmas home tour 2011 so if you want to see more home decor from around here, that's the time to check it out.

Another fun weekend :)

Warning! This post has a ton of photos!

A few weekends ago (labour day actually) our family had a really great day with my mom and Al on their sailboat. We went up the lake to a lovely beach and spent the day hanging out in the sun. At first I thought our kids would be bored and drive us nuts (they're used to speedboat speed) but they were actually great and they all had a fantastic time.

This first pic is of Gabe and Cady poking their heads out of the berth in the front and catching a breeze.

Next is Pat and Nyla having a moment together.

              And then Pat just has to be a goof :)

       Next we went for a little hike with my mom on the "beach trail" :)

           and yes it made me very nervous that there was a bear in the area, but that just made me sing louder...
         Next is Grandma and Gabe hanging out on a cool tree stump

And my goofy kids (the air horn is to scare off bears too) I love this one :)

                      Nyla was doing her "peace out", so Gabe tells me

and Pat tried to skip some rocks, he's actually pretty good :)

When we got back from our exploring, Al had the fire going so we roasted some hotdogs for lunch...

and ooey gooey marshmallows for dessert :)

On our way back, Nyla tried her hand at stearing the boat, she did really well!

And of course we had some more snacks. Peaches! yum!

Thanks mom and Al for a wonderful and relaxing day!

A beautiful, busy, fun weekend part 1

Last weekend we had a wonderful weekend with family. We went to my favorite place in the world where we lazed on the beach and ate junk food :) But, we also went on a wonderful hike to the top of a 5000 ft mountain peak and did some boating activities as well. Here we all are near the peak,

The picture above was actually taken on the way down, the picture below was taken on the way up and you can see the top of the peak we hiked to on the right, there is a building up there that you can barely see.

There is the lake we were boating on and swimming in, waaaaaaaayyyyyy down below :)

And the little village we were staying at,

Pat, contemplating life at the top :)

We did the hike with my dad and brother and Pat's dad and step-mom. Here's Gabe with the grandparents at the top

Hiking down, the kids all did so well, I'm so grateful to have kids who love hiking and doing things outdoors. When we were at the top, there were a group of people we were chatting with and they offered our kids a small piece of wrapped hard candy. When we were hiking down I asked Nyla and Cady what their favorite part was and they said the candy! oh and the amazing view :) kids are so funny aren't they?

There were tons of beautiful alpine wildflowers all along the way

My husband and brother decided to bike down from the parking lot and apparently they had a blast :)

Well this has been part one of our Saturday, stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 and more pictures. Have you been on any nice hikes lately? Do you enjoy hiking or hate it? Are you a mountain biker like my hubby or not so much like me?

Weekend Fun

      Did you have a good weekend?  We did! On Saturday we had Cady's birthday party here at home. She invited six of her little kindergarten friends and of course there was cake and ice cream and presents. She had a good time but was a little overwhelmed ( it was her first party with friends, we usually have a party with all our family and relatives before they are in school.) so thankfully I had planned on it only being two hours long. They had a great time, Nyla helped out a lot and Gabe, well Gabe didn't quite understand the concept that all the presents were Cady's and he wanted to open them all! He was quite upset and would go into a corner and cry pitifully, it broke my heart! We had a nice long snuggle after the party, he and I, while the girls played littlest pet shops for a bit.









     Then daddy had the idea to go down to the park close to our house and check out if the lake was frozen. So, we bundled up, hopped in the truck and went down there to check it out, little realizing how freaking cold it was out! It wasn't so bad on most of the trail that was in the trees and bushes, but as soon as we were in the open and especially down by the water, it was super windy and FREEZING! Seriously, I think it was about -26 out. It was pretty neat seeing how much everything was frozen (our lake doesn't actually freeze over, as there are a few dams further down.) there was a good portion that was frozen solid close to the shore as you can see in the right side of the picture below.








    On Sunday, Pat took the girls up skiing while Gabe and I had a quiet day at home, which was really nice. I had one of those days where I could think of a million things I COULD do, but alas got nothing done. Well, not really nothing, I did a few loads of laundry and read a few chapters of my current book ( I'm reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon) That is definitely my favorite part about winter, snowflakes falling outside, nice warm fire inside, curled up in a cozy blanket, drinking a cup of tea (or hot chocolate if you prefer) and reading a good book. What's your favorite part of winter? Do you have fresh snow too?