Sunday Drive

I have been feeling a bit nature deprived.  I've been feeling this way for a while now.  Neil has gone up the canyon a couple of times with the scouts and keeps coming back with glowing reports of the beauty of the earth.  I haven't been snowshoeing yet!   The kids have been reluctant and I have grown weary of the fight.  But today my family was willing to take a spontaneous drive up the canyon for me.  We planned to drive all the way to Cameron Pass where the snow is, but we couldn't leave until after church, around 3 p.m., and Cameron Pass is about 1-1/2 hours away.  As we were driving up the canyon we saw snow-covered cars coming down.  In my imagination it should have been a beautiful, sunny, blue-skied, white piney-treed world.  Not a cloudy, blowing blizzard.  So we started looking for places lower down in the canyon to pull off and at least walk around a bit.  It wasn't my ideal snow-covered world, but it was nature.  We found a campground near the frozen Poudre river and piled out of the car.   The river looked frozen enough to walk on--at least near the edges.  It was actually a blast sliding on the ice, climbing rocks, and posing for pictures.  We had a great time and my nature cup was filled for the time being.  I still want to snowshoe though. . . .  (You will notice that Hayley is absent in the pictures below.  I gave her a choice and a guilt trip, but she was suprisingly immune!  She chose the quiet afternoon at home over the crowed van drive up the canyon.)

Climbing to New Heights!

Hayley and Emily have discovered a new hobby!  Hayley's friends go to a climbing gym several days a week after school.  Hayley started going and then invited Emily to try it too.  (Emily has more time on her hands now that she has retired her clogging shoes.)   It is good, clean fun!   They are getting pretty buff too. :)

On Friday they took the little brothers along.  It was pretty exciting stuff! 

A perfect outlet for little monkeys!