Spring Afternoon Photos

We've been getting some much needed rain here lately, but this afternoon the sun is out and the sky is bright blue. It's starting to look like spring around here, so I headed out with my camera on f/5.6 this afternoon to grab a few photos. Enjoy!

Crabapple tree on the creek behind our house.

The lilacs are just about ready to bloom. They should be gorgeous in a couple of weeks.

Chokecherry tree with a busy little bee flitting around.

Winter Fading Into Spring

Wow, it's been quite awhile since I posted here. Life has been getting in the way lately.

We just got back from our annual weekend in Estes Park. We weren't able to get up the mountain until later this winter, so the snowshoeing wasn't great. In preparation for next year, we went ahead and reserved a weekend earlier in the winter. We had a few other occurrences that also impacted our snowshoeing experience. I told my husband that he and the kids should get yaktrax like I had in case there wasn't enough snow for the snowshoes. So everyone else had their yaxtrax; and I couldn't find mine anywhere. I'm tempted to buy a new pair, but know that mine will turn up as soon I get the new pair. My brother and his wife forgot their snow boots. So I used snowshoes this weekend, and my brother and his wife wore yaxtrax over tennis shoes. But we still had a good time!

My husband and me at the top of a steep climb with an amazing view.

In Estes Park itself there was almost no snow. We went for a short hike yesterday afternoon, and my poor son come back covered in ticks. There were like 10 ticks on the boy. We think he must have brushed up again some sort of foliage where they had a nest or something.

The sunny side of the mountain with no snow.

The moon going down behind the mountain this morning.

We got home today and it is 82 degrees. We all had to change into shorts, and it's not even officially spring yet. While I know that some people like this weather, I feel cheated out of winter this year, and I think we're going to have a rough fire season this year. We had to drive home past a bad fire in Boulder Canyon this morning.

These flower photos are all from my yard over the past week. Whether the calendar is ready or not, spring is arriving.

My daughter is turning 16 years old tomorrow. She's so excited to get her license. It's different than it was when I turned 16 though. The kids have to drive with a permit for a full year now, so she has to wait until this coming weekend to take her driving test. But it's going to be a spring break of freedom for her the following week!

We finally seem to have a handle on my son's medication and behavior needs, both at home and at school, and I'm thrilled to report that things have been so much better lately. We still have our challenges (he's an almost 13-year old boy after all), but he's been so much more successful and happier which makes all of us happier. He's been voluntarily doing homework again, and we've been getting through chores without an all-out war each week.

I'm also doing really well with my weight-loss. I'm down 15 pounds since January, and only have 8 more to go to get back to my goal weight. Doing a team weight-loss competition was what I needed to get going. At this point my success is motivating enough, but at the beginning when I wanted to eat a milkshake because I was stressed out, knowing that others were counting on me stopped me from making such a poor choice.

So overall things are looking up. Life still throws us curve balls when we least expect it, just like everyone else. But we're navigating and figuring things out. I'm not going promise more posts because I don't want to make a liar of myself; but I will try to be more consistent.