Eli at 5yrs old

We took Eli's pictures on a hike in Spearfish Canyon a few weeks ago. We went to so many forests for pictures this year, one might think they were all taken at the same place!
Same old story: not the best time of day, best smiles aren't in the best pictures, etc. But anyway here are some of the best ones.

A.  These are all pretty nice. I think I like the top left best.

B. I like the standing ones and wish the light was better. Eli informed me that his favorite is the bottom left. Look at it big, and you'll see why he says it's "so silly".

C. The top left is really nice in light and layout. I actually took a picture of Jonah in this very spot a few years ago. I like the hiding one, but Joseph says it looks like Eli is going...well, you know. And Eli likes the bottom left.

D. I'm not sure I like any of these that much. The light was pretty there, but they're not great.

E. At least we got a horizontal one.

F. I really like the face and pose in this top one. Silly guy. And the poses are nice in all three,even though the color seems weird.

 What do you think?

Visit to Grandmas

I have five million pictures of our vacation this summer, but I doubt everyone wants to see all my photos. Instead, I picked a few photos to share my 'impression' of our trip.

Grandma's house was delightful. There is a beautiful garden out back with hollyhocks, fairy lights, and some cute fruit trees. Our cousin Strider was there, and River and he had fun exploring. More fun than it would appear in this picture.


 


My Grandma was there too, and the kids had fun spending time with her.



We loved Mom's apricot jam, and we even got to pick some apricots. Grandma Betty put these apricots in the window to ripen.

 

The kids did water balloons one afternoon and we did a lot of relaxing in the yard, especially in the evenings when it wasn't so hot.

 


 

We had fun Japanese style lamps up in the yard for Jonah's birthday, and enjoyed leaving them there for the rest of the week! It was like a party every night.

Jonah had a great party, and we started the day off with our traditional muffins, and ended the day in the decorated yard.

One evening we went on the  hike at the Canyon Park and it was lovely. It had rained that day and we weren't sure we'd be able to go, but the deluge let up just in time and lent a glow to the black path and the surrounding scenery. It also made it nice and cool instead of hot as the weather had been during the week.




 
 

As you know, we spent one day enjoying Cedar Breaks. There were fragrant wild flowers everywhere and it was a wonderful day. We hadn't been there in about ten years!

 

 

 

We also visited Brian Head Peak and took in the view from the top of the mountain. On the way down, we stopped at the ever popular Bristlecone Pine Trail to round out our drive.

Our last night in town we got to see the Green Show at the Shakespeare Festival's new area. And the next morning, we made a stop at the temple still under construction.

On our drive home, we got to make another fun stop: Devil's Tower. We haven't been there for about four years, so it was a fun little hike with the scenery of the tower as well as some smaller flora and fauna. The landscape is very similar to that around Mt Rushmore; in fact I think they're both considered part of the Black Hills.

 

A little plant growing out of a boulder

 

Cool moss on a boulder

I have tons of cool pictures from here and everyone else, but it would take forever to post them all. But here's the coolest one that I know you want to see.

in the garden

At our new house, we were delighted to discover that there were a lot of flowers already planted. We knew about the orange flowers that would bloom later in the summer, as we'd seen them before we moved in, but it was fun to see that there were other surprises that popped up in the spring!

 

There were some dark purple irises, some bright purple flowers that might have a relation to wild onions? There were some tiny hyacinths as well.

 
 


We had a few small trees with some spring blooms on them



 but nothing as spectacular as I saw in Pierre in April! Those trees were amazing. It was like St. George on steroids.





We also planted some flowers of our own behind our garage. For Mother's Day, Josh gave me a packet of seeds from school that had a wide variety meant to attract pollinators. They didn't grow that great (I think the soil isn't very good,even with the added soil we bought) but we had fun growing them! There were a few varieties of sunflowers, and several plants I'd never seen before. I hope some of them come back next year, and maybe they'll spread out more.

Joseph tried to grow a little garden too; he had some potato plants, an onion, and a handful of herbs. He spent a lot on new soil and they started out well, but in the end the plants died because there was some kind of grub getting at them- we think they might be June bugs. He got a small handful of potatoes in the end.


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Even though our little gardens weren't perfect, it was fun to spend some time outside this summer. Bonus: there were several birds nests in our yard early in the summer! These two were particularly easy to see.

Yay for summer gardens!