Outdoor adventures

Living in Colorado has been fun. I love Austin, but while I was there, I missed the dry air and the mountains. A lot. I am so happy to be able to share with the kids a little bit of what I loved about Utah.
Every Saturday we have been going out as a family to explore a little bit of Boulder.

A couple of weeks ago we went for a little hike in Chautauqua Park. The scenery was beautiful. See those mountains? We didn't have those in Austin.

The kids were troopers. Elinor hiked every step that I would allow her to (a lot of the trail was very muddy so I carried her). Do you like how Em and I dressed for the occasion? Hiking in a skirt and sandals through deep mud definitely made things interesting.

A lot of the trails were closed due to the flooding. The one we were on was open but still very, very muddy.

See how determined El was? She was like the the whole way.

Aww.

Another of our other Saturday "adventures:"

Rock climbing at a nearby park.

El lay like this for probably 20 minutes while all the other kids took their turns running on and spinning the blue thing. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what is going on in that brain of hers.

More climbing.

This slide was cool because the only way up was to climb the rocks. Em kept trying to show Caleb how to go up the stairs and then hop the fence, but he wasn't so into that.

 We went to a pumpkin patch with Em's school group last week.

Caleb fulfilled his big-brotherly duty by pulling these two around on the wagon for actually a really long time.

The two heads in the middle are Emily and Caleb. The hay maze was great for little kids and for parents wanting to keep track of said little kids!

And, somehow I managed to get zero pictures of the kids with any pumpkins. I did get this lovely shot of Jacob peeking through a scarecrow lady cutout though.

And we had another snow day. This time the snow packed really well and the kids decided within about 5 seconds to build a snowman.

They worked together so well! Em made the bottom, Caleb made the middle, and El made the head. I was pretty proud of them.

Then Em went off and made her own little family of snow people. Caleb felt it necessary to shade her with a leafless branch.

And here's proof that Jacob we do sometimes bring Jacob outside with us. Occasionally.

And we do school too. I took this picture because I was so proud of myself for setting all three up happily and working independently... for about two minutes.

 I love that Colorado is such an outdoorsy place, and I'm excited that the kids are getting old enough to participate in some of it. I'm a little nervous about the coming winter though!

Snow day!

Today was a little bit crazy because this is what we woke up to:

And really, it wasn't very much, but the kids were ecstatic. Caleb kept asking if it was Christmas.
Unfortunately, we had a lot of schooling to do, so I promised the kids nothing and we buckled down.
I put Jacob to bed around 9:30 and realized that I couldn't deprived these fresh Texas transplants of their first Colorado snow. And if I waited much longer it would all be gone.

So we set the puzzles and writing and piano practice aside and bundled up to go outside. Caleb was so excited! He was the first outside and he turned and reported to the other kids, "There's TONS of snow!! There's tons of snow!" And I suppose there was, compared to what we've gotten in Austin the past couple of years.

I loved how there was a sort of  preliminary investigative process before they could get down to business. We probably need to think about buying mittens before the season gets much further underway.

They got the hang of it eventually. I spent some time running from snowballs, mostly sent my way by the darkly hooded one.

And yes, I did have to tell this one to stop eating the snow.

I loved that when I scooped Elinor up to take her inside she looked up at me and said, as best as she could through her chattering teeth, "This actually is snow!"  (She says actually a lot.)

Afterward, we all went in for some hot chocolate. It was really just chocolate milk that I warmed up in the microwave. We just came from Texas! Of course we don't have hot chocolate mix!  ... yet. We will adjust to this climate eventually.