Easter

I hope your Easter was filled with big smiles...

Bright colors...

And lots of fun!

To my friends in the frozen north...

I found spring!

And I bottled it...

And it can be yours for just three easy payments of $19.99!!

Call me.

Little blossoms

One of my favorite things about Spring is all the flowering trees.

It's sad when the petals start to fall and all the pastels that painted the trees have gone.

So, I'm definitely enjoying the season and trying to get as many pictures as possible.

Thank you, Claritin, for making that possible.  :o)

Now that I have the new camera, 

I've had to readjust the way I take macro shots.
  

I've been using the 50mm lens to take the shot,

focusing on the item that I want to see close up,

then cropping it down quite a bit and creating the picture from there.

I spent a bit of time playing with the crop function and trying to find the "picture within the picture."
A new and different process.

You can find more Macro's at Lisa's blog.

All dressed in their finest...

Happy Easter to all the friends and family that we love and miss.

Go take a hike!

The first day of Spring brought us some rather summer-like weather,

so we spent most of the weekend outside enjoying every moment of it.

In Friday's post, I said that I was planning to take the kids on a hike and hike we did.

We loved that it was a very rustic trail with lots of steep climbs and makeshift bridges.

The kids and I have been studying survival skills in our science class.

Fortunately, we didn't need to use any of our new skills, 

but it gave us a chance to discuss what we've learned.

The flooded area reminded us that making camp too close to a river bed could be dangerous
And Julia recalled how to get yourself unstuck from muddy swamps.
I was pleased that she remembered, but even more pleased that she didn't feel the need to demonstrate this skill.

The hike wasn't terribly strenuous, but without even realizing it,

we went from the river's banks to an overlook high above the river.

This bridge was the one "real" bridge there,
most of them were just four or five wood planks stuck together.
Grant was disappointed that they were even that wide,
I think he would have preferred to have to balance across just one 2x6
or even better... a fallen log.

I guess my version of rustic differs a bit from his version.

We found remnants of fall still clinging to the trees.

Now... this may not bother you or me, but for Grant,
who's main goal over Thanksgiving was to remove all the leaves of of this tree,
all these leftover leaves were quite annoying.

I think that the new Spring buds will push away all the dead leaves soon enough.

We had our first picnic of the year!
Grant had been saving the sausage for the first day of Spring
and we were more than happy to help him celebrate by eating it with him.

It was so good, we ate the leftovers for dinner that night.

There were some old buildings on the property,
the ruins of an old coach house and granary,
that provided us with some picture taking opportunities.

Unfortunately, it was noon when the photos were taken, so the light was not great,
but that just gave me a chance to play around with some photo editing.
Cool, huh?

Now, I know not everyone had summer weather this weekend
(yeah, I'm talking to you, Alita),
but what did you do on this first weekend of Spring?

Yay! It's Friday!

Wasn't I just whining about all of the snow and cold like...yesterday?

  And now accuweather informs me that we are going to have three straight days of sunny 70+ degree weather.     

That's more of an aberration than the norm, but I'll take it. 

All of a sudden Spring sprang up and winter is just a memory!

This weather is so wonderful that I am bouncing around, being silly, and generally being a spaz.
  Of course, that could be the caffeine too, but whatever....

(Oh, my goodness. Yesterday, I forgot my morning cup of tea. 

What a bad mistake.  I was dragging all day.)

So I've been spending my morning researching places to go and enjoy this amazing weather.  I figure we should take advantage of it while we can.  Of course, I wasn't aware that we'd have this weather, so earlier in the month I planned appointments and such to take place today, so the most outdoor time we'll get is running from car to building and back. 

Bummer. 

And the kids have school.  I'm thinking of taking a mental health day.  Get those kids outside!

Actually, I think it's more like a shoe shopping day.  We need good walking shoes.

  I'm dragging those kids on a hike tomorrow!

(Boy, I hope I have as much energy tomorrow as I seem to have today!)

A promise

Looking out the window this morning, I noticed something looked slightly different.

 

Something new...

  

Something with a promise of Spring!

 

Happy Macro Monday

and Happy (almost) Spring.