Random Pictures from our weekend......

Yesterday we drove up to the quaint mountain town of Ouray to enjoy their hot springs pool. We try to go up there a couple of times a year and always have a great time! How can you not when you're soaking in the wonderfully warm hot spring water, surrounded by this mountain beauty? Ouray is known as the "Little Switzerland of America" and sits nestled in the base of a canyon. A fun little tourist town, it's got lots of fun shops and bed and breakfasts.
Dusty and James enjoyed playing in the water. We always talk about going up in the winter to experience the hot springs in the snow! So far we've not been brave enough, but there's always this coming winter!!
The first time we brought James to the hot springs, he was 9 months old and he fell asleep in my arms in the water and slept for an hour!! He laughs at that story now, as he can't imagine sleeping rather than playing!!
What can I say about this picture??? I have a crazy kid and one very tolerant dog!!! Made for a cute picture anyway!!
No, not ALL our sunsets in the Uncompahgre Valley are breathtakingly beautiful, but we do have our share!!! This was this evening, on our ride! I was frustrated because I was loosing light so quickly, but then I looked to the west!! WOW!! I sure am going to miss our evening rides when summer comes to an end!!

Thanks for stopping by and having a look!!

Photo Challenge #13 - THE BEAUTY OF DECAY

We went for a drive tonight in search of decay. Dusty's first idea was to drive by one of the dairy farms in the area....thought there would be plenty of decay there!! LOL As I wasn't terribly interested in taking pictures of cow poop, we drove on and found a few different options to explore.

We came across this old cottonwood tree with quite a bit of decay at it's base.
There was a farm that we drove by that had several very old pieces of farm equipment displayed out by the road. By this time, the sun was going down and the lighting wasn't good....this was that best I could do!
Then we came to a very old cemetary, way out in the country, that we didn't know anything about. We got out and walked around as the sun was setting. The graves went back to 1811!! We'll have to go back to check it out more when we have more daylight.

This picture is of one of the older graves.....I changed it to sepia as it already looked like I took it at night!

Photo Challenge #12 - LINES

After our camping trip last weekend, we decided to stay close to home this weekend. We didn't even venture out to take pictures! So this is what I found around the house for the challenge this week.....


The rug at our front door. Lots of lines here!
The tiles in our little entry way. I also liked the way the sun shone through our screen door, providing a few more lines!!
This is the bottom of an antique radio cabinet that once belonged to my husband's great-aunt. There used to be material between the plywood and the X's (I guess it was destroyed years ago by a family cat....long before I joined the family!) Anyway, I thought the X's made interesting lines!
We were playing a new game of dominos that we've just learned, called "Chicken Foot"!! Here is the end product of one of the rounds.....talk about lines that lead nowhere!!
And this is the tile floor in our kitchen, the lines leading to Dusty's feet!! Looks like the grout could use some attention! Maybe next weekend!!

Well that's it for this week! Thanks, ladies, for another fun challenge!! Looking forward to Wednesday and the posting of the next one!!

Oops! How did I miss these??

I had these pictures all ready to download, but missed them with all the others. I still wanted to share them, so here they are!!

What's a camping trip without fishing!?? Certainly not in THIS family! Dusty and James love to fish, and although James is still learning I'm glad it's an interest that they both share!

I took this picture on Sunday morning, as James grabbed his fishing pole and tackle box and headed down to the lake to join his Dad to fish while Mom made breakfast! Too darn cute!!
And here they are....the Ryan fishermen!! The fishing wasn't very good, but that didn't do much to diminish their enthusiasm!!

A Fun Weekend Camping Up on Grand Mesa

WOW!! Well, I guess this is our camping weekend in pictures!! Though looking through these I realize one thing.....as I sheltered my camera from the incessant rain, it ends up looking like we had pretty nice weather! Quite to the contrary! We arrived at our camping spot Friday afternoon and it sprinkled on and off until evening. Our camp fire was very brief that night (I was very dissappointed as that's my favorite part of camping!) as it started to pour around 9pm. We were quite relieved to find out that our tent was rainproof, complete with it's rainfly! The four of us were all in our tent (yes, Lacey too!) all cuddled down, nice and warm and dry. It rained all night long! I only woke up one time during the night when it wasn't raining. As I lay there thoughout the night listening to the rain, I wondered if it wouldn't just be smarter to pack it all up on Saturday and go home instead of staying on until Sunday!

This is the only picture I have of James wearing short sleeves and shorts! After this he was in jeans and a turtleneck the rest of the weekend!

The first night, after being chased into bed early by the rain, thunder and lightening, James was all smiles! He loves to camp!
All bundled up against the cool, wet weather we took a walk in the woods, just the two of us!!
James has become quite a reader. He took a backpack full of books with him, just in case we had to spend a lot of time in the tent because of rain. Even though that didn't really happen, he still wanted to pull up a chair (in the middle of the forest) and read his favorite book...."Sharks and Other Sea Creatures - A Dictionary"!! I loved it!!

Because I've had several people comment that I haven't been including pictures of myself on this blog, I made an attempt to take some over the weekend! This is one of my favorites of James and me!
And here's "Dad" getting ready to make breakfast!
Love those camping meals cooked over the camp stove or campfire!! We try to keep our meals simple, but we always enjoy the expereince!
James and Dusty taking a break after breakfast. You can see part of our tent in the background.
And what would a camping trip be without smores??? I LOVE this picture of James!! This one will most definitely be scrapped! I can't get over how dirty his hands were.....just something you've got to look past while camping!! I bought a tub of "wet wipes" and we used them all the time, but the pictures tell a different story!! LOL

I set my camera on the "candlelight" setting while taking pictures of James with our campfire on Saturday night. It rained for about an hour and a half on Saturday afternoon and then the skies cleared and we had a lovely evening, cooking our dinner over the campfire, making smores and enjoying the campfire for a couple of hours before going to bed.
This was Lacey's first camping trip and she did very well!! She's now 8 months old and is so much fun to watch as she explores the world around her. The longer we have her, the more attached James becomes and they are very cute together!

While she wasn't thrilled by the thunder and lightening, she was pleased to be in the tent with us and didn't complain too much.
James is very responsible with Lacey and takes on most of the "dog chores" without being told. He walks her acouple of times a day. Here they are walking through the camp ground.

We had a long chain, so we were able to tie her up at our campsite, but she was able to roam quite a distance even on the chain. James took her for walks (without the leash) in the woods behind our site, and she was so much fun to watch as she explored.
James loves his puppy so much and is constantly entertained by her. I think she finds him entertaining as well!!
All that fresh air and activity really pooped her out!! She found a patch of sunshine to nap in!!

Wildflower Beauty!

The wildflowers up on Grand Mesa are truly spectacular this year! Everyone was saying how everything is late because we had so much snow and such low temperatures this last winter. Well, it all may be later than usual, but it certainly paid off! The wildflowers were everywhere you looked and were so gorgeous! It's no wonder that I took so many pictures this last weekend!!

After this camping trip, I now realize that I definitely must get myself a Colorado Wildflower book!! I get frustrated when I can't identify what I'm looking at!!

James enjoyed the wildflowers a lot this weekend! They grew right up to the banks of the lake and with him standing in the middle of them, you can tell how tall they were (he's around 4 feet tall now!).

This picture was taken in the small meadow that was adjacent to our campsite. James really enjoyed walking through this meadow and did so several times in the few days we were up there, looking for chipmunks! I love this picture and feel a scrapbook page coming on!!
Another one of the lake and flowers!
A whole hillside of wild daisies!! WOW!

And some more!!!

Photo Challenge #11 - Morning, Noon and Night

This weekend we went camping and I was very excited because I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to take pictures for this week's challenge. Well, it would have been with the exception that the weather didn't really cooperate most of the weekend. It rained A LOT!! That made the camping experience very interesting, to say the least!

So with cloudy, and rainy skies much of the weekend, taking pictures for this challenge was.....well, a challenge!! The whole idea was to capture different lighting in the same spot, at different times of the day. This was virtually impossible when all we had was clouds and rain! I did manage to come up with these two pictures. The first one was taken in the morning with the sun shining on Ward Lake, where we camped. (This was almost the only time we saw the sun all weekend!)

This second picture was taken in the evening after one of the storms had passed and the sun tried to break through the clouds for a few minutes. It did well enough to create a rainbow, which I managed to photograph!

So that's my contribution for this week! Stay tuned though.....I took 110 pictures this weekend and later on in the week, when I have more time, I'll be posting some of them here! Now I'm off to get ready for my week, finish unpacking from the camping trip and watch a little bit of the Olympics before heading to bed!!

Corn Festival Weekend!

What a fun weekend we've had.....the 17th Annual Olathe Sweet Corn Festival was yesterday. It was a long day, but it was filled with friends, family and much laughter. It was hotter than I like it (around 100 degrees!), but somehow we pushed through that to really enjoy the weekend. It started on Friday night, with a street dance in downtown Olathe (remember the pictures I posted last week of our downtown area?). James had a blast, meeting up with several of his old classmates! Here he is with Kylee! They had a wonderful time, dancing the night away to the live band!! They were so cute to watch!!

We were so glad that Dusty's daughter was able to drive up from Denver to join us for the weekend! It was so much fun to be able to share "our" special weekend with her and she really seemed to enjoy herself!!

Here she is with her Dad! Thanks, Lori, for giving us your weekend and letting us share our small town experiences with you!! We love you!!
Once at the festival on Saturday, we enjoyed wandering around and looking at all the vendor boothes. There were over 200 different vendors there, selling food, crafts, services and other stuff! It's amazing how many people I saw that I knew! I guess working at the grocery store in this small town really has helped me meet A LOT of people!

Here is James enjoying the "bouncy house"!! He loves to do flips and I managed to catch him in midair, though it's not a great picture as it was taken through the netting side!
And, of course, it wouldn't be a Corn Festival without eating large quantities of corn!! My boy took a moment to peer out from behind his cowboy hat for Mama to take this picture! But you better be careful not to interrupt him for long, as corn eating is serious business!!
James had to proudly "brag" that he had actually eaten 4 ears of corn!! OMG!! The thought of that makes my belly hurt!! I only had 2!!

Travis Tritt Comes to Olathe!

Last night, as the heat of the day subsided and the sunset, we headed back up to the festival grounds (the benefit to living only a mile away is that we can go home for a few hours and then go back in the evening for the concert!). Travis Tritt was the main entertainer and he put on a great 2 1/2 hour show!! This is part of the crowd that showed up to enjoy the sights and sounds of the night. After the concert, there was a fireworks show! A perfect way to end a very fun day!! We didn't get home until 12:45am, but it was worth it!!

Here's James, eating yet again!! How can you NOT eat at a festival!?? Last night it was snowcones and funnel cakes.....yummy!!
While waiting for the concert to begin, we took some pictures of each other. We don't see Lori very often, so it was nice to be able to include her in pictures as well. Here I am with her!

And there aren't many pictures of Dusty and me, so here's a new one!

Photo Challenge #10 - SIGNS

I don't have much to offer for this week's photo challenge, but this one did strike us funny! On our way, walking to the street dance downtown on Friday night we came upon this street sign. Now we've lived in Olathe for more than 10 years, and early on I must have seen these signs along "Main Street" and thought that they were funny, but after so many years, I just don't see it anymore! Dusty's daughter, Lori, was with us all weekend.....she had come up from Denver for the Corn Festival, and she was the one who pointed out the sign! You see, even though Olathe is a very small town the local government often has trouble agreeing on things. Apparently, this was one such situation! They couldn't agree on whether it should be "4th Street" or "Main Street", so they named it both!!

The Shot That Got Away!!!
Right after taking the above shot, we walked passed a house with a hummingbird feeder hanging in front. Right next to the feeder was a "No Tresspassing" sign. As we walked passed, a hummingbird flew away from the feeder. If I only could have gotten a picture of the bird, the feeder and the sign together that would have been classic, but I just wasn't fast enough!! Oh well, maybe next time!!