Wildflowers and Walks

In the last few weeks we've gone to a few fun places...fun for me especially because I got some good pictures! First, we went on a little walk not too far from our home.



It was a steep little hike, and while Elora loved it, Joseph wasn't happy about having to push the stroller up the incline, or being "tricked" into exercise, as he described it. (Oh, and he hates this picture. I can't imagine why ;))




But we really didn't go that far, and at the top of the hill we had a great view of the University and the town. (Joseph took this picture, I just brightened it up a bit.)



Then Joseph took about a dozen pictures of Joshua standing in the grass, where he was waving around pieces and being a silly little boy. This was deemed the cutest one by his mother. (Me).



After thoroughly exploring the top of the hill (where we thankfully had a bench to sit on!) Elora led the way back down, running and skidding all the way.



At the bottom is a man made little pool, where the kids enjoy throwing rocks...Josh especially! The water levels are really low right now, bu they didn't let that deter them from all their hunting and throwing.




Okay, this picture is totally weird, but I love it. Doesn't it look like something bizarre is going on, like a nuclear explosion or an alien abduction? Really, Josh just fell down and hurt his foot, and I think I told Elora to yell something.



Josh doing his balancing act... when I look at these pictures, he looks so big to me!



Jonah got set on this rock by daddy, and he couldn't be more thrilled. Of course, we had to hurry and take the pictures before he tumbled off!




Then last weekend, we drove up to Tony Grove Lake. We've been near the turn-off several times, but this is the first time we drove all the way up; I didn't realize it was so high up the mountian! While it was in the mid nineties at home, we were in heaven in the low seventies. Unfortunately, when we got to the lake (which was beautiful), we realized you had to pay to park there and we hadn't brought any cash or checks. Darn it.
I was pretty bummed, but we were able to drive back down the road to a turn off with beautiful wildflowers all around!

We had brought picnic stuff, and we set up to eat.



In photos it looks ideal, but there was one problem. We were very near a horse trail (recently used) and that meant flies and bugs- lots of them. Giant flies were buzzing around our heads, insects were instantly getting mired in our salad, and Elora kept screaming about it. This was scaring Joshua, and Joseph was overreacting to the buzzing insects to a ridiculous degree. Needless to say, within five minutes this little picnic was over...



and we adjourned to the car to finish our meal. We finished quickly and hiked around for a little bit. Without our food, we were much less of a draw for all of the insect life, and it was much more pleasant out! Still, my whiny children all said they had to go to the bathroom and their legs were tired, (really, after five minutes of walking?) so it didn't last too long.

We did get some pretty pictures before we left though. This is the best one I've taken of myself so far this summer, don't you agree?


Joseph carrying his youngest, who was elated at the elevated view (though I had to try really hard to get him to smile for the picture) :




We hadn't brought any shoes for Jonah, but we did let him down just this once so I could get a fun picture. Of course, no matter what I did he wouldn't look up at the camera!



Josh was ready to go back to the car so we didn't get many pictures of him, but Elora was more than willing to pose with all the flowers:



After this we trundled back up to the lake so everyone could use their bathrooms (and Joseph got slightly reprimanded by the forest ranger for sitting in the car while we were inside: "What if everyone thought they could come park here for just a minute to use the bathrooms? We can't have people doing that.") Then we headed back down to the oppressive heat in Cache Valley.

Hopefully we'll have time to go again (with parking money) before we're outta here!