The Other Blog

I thought I'd mention that my other blog address is

windsweptplains.wordpress.com

I post similar but usually different pictures there, depending on whichever blog will let me post that day!

Fall Breckenridge Trip

Abby is leaving this week for Hawaii, so she wanted to get a good dose of fall in before she left. So, we took our fall excursion to Breckenridge in September instead of October. It looks like, barring any snowstorms this coming week, that the peak color will be next weekend.  We still saw a lot of gold, although the trees actually had a lot of orange and some red this year, which we have never seen before in the Aspens. I thought only Birch did that. 

The second photo is one Brian took with the tripod, using it like a selfie stick (idea provided by Jacob). We were laughing in the photo because a group of young adults were walking by and commenting on our set up - "That's one hard core selfie stick!"

Abby's Birthday and Garden of the Gods

• We all went down to Hannah's place in the Springs for Abby's birthday. While we were there, we took some photos at Garden of the Gods. We are hoping at least one of the photos will turn out for our Christmas picture, since Abby will be leaving in two weeks and won't be home until February. 

I'm not a big fan of the whole posing thing where people are all over the place like in the second photo, but my photographer children think it is great, so there it is. I'd rather us all sit or stand together, so old fashioned!

Afterwards, Abby chose to get burgers for her birthday dinner. She had opened her gifts at Hannah's place earlier and since Abby has been sick for the past week (on the mend now), she chose not to have a cake or dessert due to the sugar. So, Jacob got a strawberry milkshake and shared that with the non-ill members of the group!

Hope with a friend

Getting Ready for Yardwork, Country Style

Fall House Projects

Brian has been replacing some of the siding on the parts of the house that take the brunt of our weather. He has also been doing a lot of touch up painting, so the house is looking a bit better. Our fields were cut a couple of weeks ago, too, so even though Fall has showed up a month early, we will be ready for winter whenever it comes.

Late Summer

Once again, blogger is not allowing me to upload pictures as before. Grrr. Anyway, slacklining  has become a new obsession this week. We need to get a set up in the back yard (no trees, that makes it hard) which will let us extend the line all the way.  In the front yard, we don't have a very long space to walk over.  I suppose we will be taking this to a nearby park eventually, like real slackliners do. We should practice enough so that we will not embarrass ourselves in public first!

Oh, blogger, how you frustrate me. I don't know why these pictures are doing what they are doing, but they wouldn't upload and I added them in a different way.

Anyway, until Brian can help fix this:  I am working on transferring the pictures from Mom's photo albums since the paper is disintegrating. I have finished one album and am getting ready to start album #2. Very time consuming, but fun.

Hope bought herself a go-pro helmet so she can video her riding adventures.

We celebrated Hope's 15th birthday with a chocolate cake and gifts. She had a hard recovery from her wisdom teeth surgery, but is happily eating all things again.

The other picture is from when Sherrie Linderer was visiting Colorado and went to our church so she could see friends from our (mutual) former church. The little girl in the picture is her granddaughter.

Getting All Pinteresty in Breckenridge

Abby is hoping to sell some of her scarves as a fundraiser for her time at YWAM, specifically the airfare.  While up in Breckenridge last week with a friend (Abby was her photo assistant for a family reunion), her friend took some pictures for Abby to add to her Etsy store.

I'm not crazy about the intense color saturation and don't think it is always a good color representation of the scarves.  Hopefully for her fundraiser it will be alright.

They certainly had fun and Breckenridge is a great place for pictures.

You can look fashionable and have a wonderful time walking around the streets and peeping into the shops.

You can check out her shop "Sweetstrings By Abby" on Etsy now for a limited time.

Hope's First Horse Show

We had no idea what to expect since horse shows and things like that are far from our experience so far.

We got to the place around 3pm, but Hope didn't do her riding for almost three hours.

Next time we'll come better prepared with food and water and perhaps iPads to play Candy Crush while waiting.  There was no internet service way out there!

Out of the five events Hope participated in, she took home fourth, fifth and sixth place ribbons. She loved having a whole day to ride the horse, Tucker, and to have a whole day to *talk to other girls about horses!!!*

A Few of Hannah's Breckenridge Pictures

Some of Hannah's Pictures from Doug and Shanan's Wedding