We just got back from a jam packed week in New England visiting Barry’s family.  This photo he took is my favorite of the nearly 400 photos we have from the trip.  We were quite an anomaly trekking through airports and train stations and big city streets with our crew of 4 boys and a girl.  We visited the birth place of a prophet, the home of a silversmith, people we love, and the ocean.  Over the next few days I’ll fill you in on some of the highlights as we try to get back to real life and set our biological clocks back to Denver time.  (The kids were all up before 6 this morning because their bodies thought it was 8!)

I’ve been really fascinated by the Colorado sky this summer.  It is so big and expansive that you can see so much variety.  From where we live we can watch the clouds congregate on the mountains and make their way toward the plains, and in the evening light they are quite a site to behold.  There are so many times I’m driving around on errands wishing I had my camera to document the towering layers, but I never have it.  I can stand on my back porch, though.  Here are some of the heavenly sites from right outside my window.

These high clouds are altocumulus.  There are 3 basic types of clouds.  Cirrus clouds are high and wispy, cumulus clouds are the mid sky cotton balls, and stratus clouds cover the sky low and like a blanket.  It gets a bit complicated for me from there because from those 3 divisions they’re categorized into 10 basic kinds of clouds because most clouds are some kind of combination of the 3 basics.

These are cumulostratus– kind of cottony, kind of blankety.

Our very favorite library book on clouds has been Tomie dePaola’s Cloud Book.  You just can’t help but love Tomie’s illustrations and humor along with real, sound information.  The Man who Named the Clouds is about Luke Howard, the man who first devised the way to categorize and name clouds.  It starts with his childhood and shows how following your passion and studying hard can really affect the world.  I also need to get myself my own copy of The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn.  It’s a nature guide for naming clouds full of lovely photos and explanations of why clouds are called what they are.

Have you been looking up lately?

I’ve been hesitant to post about our second day of hiking with the llamas.  A couple of years ago I made this post and got some comments and e-mails from people upset with the harshness of my post– they come here to be inspired and uplifted.  Well, in real life hard things happen, so if you don’t want to know about the heartbreaking tragedy that happened that second day of hiking, then skip this post.

We woke up the second morning to beautiful weather.  Barry had planned a day hike up to the next lake, but I wasn’t sure I could make it with a baby on my back.  He talked me into it though, so we packed up the llamas with light loads of lunch and jackets in case it rained and headed up the trail.  It was steep.

It’s hard to tell from these photos where the trail is, but if you look carefully you can see it  going diagonally toward the big rock face.  We needed to go up and around that rock face.

Barry decided to let Jonah lead Turk while he led Tecate and Two Socks.  Brenna and I were slow, so we didn’t see exactly what happened, but we heard falling rock and squealing, saw Logan frantically running toward us yelling that Turk was lost, he fell off the trail and they couldn’t see him.  Barry came down toward us as well, then went in search of Turk.  I huddled the kids I had with me around and we prayed that Barry would find that sweet llama, that he wouldn’t be in pain, and that everything would be all right.  After what seemed like forever Barry came back, ashen faced.  He had found Turk.  He had fallen 200 feet straight down a cliff and didn’t survive.

I can’t tell you the flood of emotions of that moment, of that day.  I was so thankful Jonah was all right.  When Turk slipped on the rock Jonah had to make the decision to let got of his rope and let him fall.  It was so surreal and shocking for all of us, but I think for him most of all.  One moment Turk was trucking up the trail, the next he was gone.  Completely gone.  I felt so horrible that we killed a llama.  What would the owners say?  How would they feel?  We made so many mistakes.  A child should not have been leading a llama over a cliff.  We shouldn’t have even taken all the llamas for a day hike, should we have?  And what was that feeling of not wanting to go on that hike in the first place?  Was that inspiration that I ignored?  Should I have been more insistent that we not go?

We went back to camp, prayed, and talked about the day.  We decided that the owners needed to know what happened, so we would cut our trip short and headed back.  Luckily we had packed pretty light.  Tecate and Two Socks could carry most of what Turk had between them, and what we couldn’t fit in their packs Barry and I would carry in ours. The kids would have to  help some too.

It was a hard hike out.  My pack was a lot heavier, the kids a lot whinier, my heart a lot heavier.  And Hunter kept pulling my hair!

It was still beautiful, though.  I tried as much as I could to ignore the pain in my shoulders to find it and record it.

I had to just keep moving one step at a time.  I tried to stay back with Brenna, but my patience was a little thin, so I just kept her in sight and she took tiny, tiny steps downhill.  She sure did look cute in her pink turtle neck and big straw hat, though.

We went down and down, switchback after switchback.

Jonah cheerfully helped Barry lead the llamas down.  He’s the best little hiker.

And then we were finished.  I held back the tears until the last big stream crossing, but then my tired shaking limbs couldn’t hold them back any longer.  I cried the rest of the way down.

Now that I have a bit of distance from the whole ordeal I can say it was a good experience.  The first day of hiking was idyllic.  And then we learned a lot.  We don’t have to do things the hardest way.  I’ll wait until I have teenagers to attempt so steep a climb again– boys who I don’t have to carry on my back, who maybe can even carry a little of my load.

We’re sorry Turk.  Thank you for your service.  You were such a good boy.  You didn’t eat when we were slow on the trail.  You were the easiest llama for the kids to lead.  You got us up into some of the prettiest mountains we’ve ever seen.  Thank you.

We left at the crack of dawn with a 6 1/2 hour drive ahead of us.  It was a rather uneventful drive.  We started listening to  the Oliver Twist audio book (we couldn’t survive road trips without audio books, I tell ya) and made several potty stops as we had an unfortunate stomach funk making the rounds through the family.  Poor Logan was throwing up the night before and I was feeling pretty yucky as we drove.  Colorado is a beautiful place though, and as we closed in on the San Juan mountains I couldn’t believe how jagged and beautiful they were.  The towering clouds that formed over the mountains were amazing to me.  I wish I had taken pictures, but I was waiting for my 24 hrs of queasiness to be over.

We camped that night in what Barry read was the most scenic campground in Colorado.  It’s right on Molas Lake right outside of Silverton, CO.  Scenic it was– and cold and rainy.

The next morning we got up early to pack our llama packs.  With all of our stuff laid out on the tarp we could see, and hear, the wall of weather coming toward us.  We hurriedly broke down tents and stowed everything in the van before the torrent began.  We had to postpone our 8 o’clock meeting with the llama guys until the downpour let up.

At about 10 the rain let up to a drizzle.  Barry used their garage to finish packing where it was dry and llama guy Mark showed me the ins and outs of llama saddling.  I loved those llamas.  I’m just an animal lover to the core.  I remember watching my grandpa groom and saddle his horses as a little girl wanting so bad to be a part of the care taking, but too shy or self conscious to ask.  It’s kind of silly, but strapping the saddles on the llamas was like living out that childhood wish.  They were good boys, those llamas.  Turk was the white one, Two Socks the dark one in the middle, and Tecate the big guy in the foreground.

The men hooked the trailer to the van, I put the llamas in the trailer and we were headed to the trail head.

The drizzle stopped when we got there.  It stayed pretty cloudy as we hiked, but not another drop fell!

Llamas can carry up to 80 lbs.  We didn’t have them loaded down that heavy and they were ready to walk as quickly as we’d let them.  Unfortunately I had to be a pack animal too so that Hunter had a way to get up the trail.  Truth be told, I was not nearly as cheerful a packer as the llamas were.  I just couldn’t get comfortable and felt so off balance because with a kid in a hiking pack all of their weight is at the top of the pack so you feel it on your shoulders.  No matter how I adjusted I couldn’t get all the weight down on my hips.  I seriously think I may have been more comfortable with a SweetPod because the baby sits low and most of the weight is on the wearer’s hips.  Anyway, enough of my whining.  It was a beautiful hike, which I can say cheerfully now that I’m looking at the photos and not actually doing it.

It was really steep though.  We gained about 1800 feet of elevation in a little over 2 miles.  Switchback after switchback, one foot in front of the other.

The kids were great.  Brenna tended to hang back with me, but Jonah can just motor on and keep up with whoever there is to keep up with.  The llamas were great too.  They were great followers no matter who was leading.  We let the kids take turns leading all three, we separated them a few times so they could each have one, and Barry led them all on the really steep parts.  They were definitely my favorite part of the hike.

After climbing up and up and up we got to this little basin and set up camp.

It really couldn’t have been more beautiful.  We had a little meadow to stake the llamas out in and big logs to sit on surrounding our camp fire.  Hunter loved just sitting in the dirt and scooping it up into his lap and wrapping little sticks with leaves.

He wrapped this stick in a leaf so intently he didn’t even notice me nearby with the camera.  He’d get the stick covered and say, “Bup.  Bup.” (which is how he says “wrap up”) over and over.  He was incredibly dirty, but incredibly happy the whole time.

If I were to do it again I would definitely invest in some kind of packable toilet.  Digging holes for 5 kids is a lot of work, pretty gross work when you’ve got a stomach thing working its way through the family.  I’d probably just get one of these seat lids that fit on a bucket and several bags.  The bucket could just have stuff packed in it and would fit in a llama pack no problem.  We packed out plenty of poop as it was because our potty learning Ian just could not relax enough to go in a hole.  Both he and Hunter were in disposable Pull-ups or diapers the whole time.

I’d also find a roll up table and pack some food in a cooler.  I had no idea we could bring a cooler if we had wanted to, having been trained well by my parents to pack lightly for backpacking trips.  The luxury of llamas is that you can bring stuff– even real food if you want. So, if you’re ever crazy enough to try this bring milk!  Bring lettuce!  Hey, you could even have ice cream!

I would remember card games.  Doh!

Another thing– I’d check the weather better.  We were in much higher mountains than I had backpacked in when I was a kid living in Idaho.  Idaho is pretty dry and gets warm during the day.  Colorado is cooler and wetter up in the mountains.  We were fine  (you don’t go through too many clothes when you don’t ever take off enough clothes to change your underwear, which was the case with all of the males I did not personally have to diaper and clothe I found out as I went through things to do laundry when we got home.  Gross.), but an extra sweatshirt and maybe even long johns for everyone would have been nice.

So, that’s the first half of our trip.  I honestly didn’t like lugging a baby up a mountain, but it sure felt good to take him off my back in the heart of pristine wilderness, set up camp, watch the llamas chomp to their hearts’ content, and see how happy my children felt about doing something so hard and being somewhere so beautiful.

Thank you Bill and Mark for sharing you sweet llamas with us!

Our trip to the San Juan mountains was breathtakingly beautiful, exhausting, exhilarating, heartbreaking, refreshing…  You know how it feels after you’ve done something really hard– so good to be done?  That’s where I am right now.  It may take me a few days to write about the whole thing after I dig out from under this pile of laundry.

See ya here soon.  It’s too big of a story not to tell.

We’ve been back for a week and I’m finally feeling like I can wrap my brain around a blog post attempt.  We had fun.  Wanna see?

We got to Boise in time for Barry to race in the annual Twilight Criterium in downtown Boise.

See him up there in the lead?  He wasn’t quite in that position at the very end, but he did really well and had a lot of fun in that mass of riders on slick skinny tires riding in circles in 102 degree weather.  It was fun for me to watch while I cast on for my vacation knitting project and visited with old friends from high school/ college.

Boise is a cool town.  Every time I’m there I wish I lived there.

Anyway, we got there and slept on the floor in my parents house for a couple of nights, then headed up to the mountains.

My sister in-law’s family has a big “cabin” on lots of land with a river running through it and a natural hot spring pool.  That’s where we headed and set up camp.  I put the word cabin in parentheses because it has 9 bedrooms, each with it’s own bathroom, a big screen TV and an enormous kitchen.  It was a such a fun, comfortable place for all 22 (give or take, depending on the day) of us to stay.

The kids rode bikes and played horse shoes with their cousins.

They caught butterflies and they swam.

This is Ian’s first ever jump of a diving board.  Isn’t that too cute that he covered his eyes?  I love that kid.

They dug in the sand.  We all swam in the river.

The grandparents watched and my dad said it was impossible to take a good picture of him because his eyes are so squinty.  I have those squinty eyes too.  And I got a good picture.

We watched my dad slam dunk a basketball.  Definitely one of the highlights of the entire trip!

My nephew had a Halloween birthday party while we were there, for which we forgot costumes.  I’m kicking myself that I can’t find a picture of Logan in the hunting outfit he scrounged out of a closet in the cabin, but the impromptu mummy costumes and Captain Garbage Can weren’t too bad either.  The mummies didn’t fare too well during the water balloon games, as you might imagine.

The “Squishy Islands” in the middle of the river were the favorite place for the kids to play.  My sister in-law would have freaked out had she seen the mud bath extravaganza.  The river rinsed it all off in a jiffy though.

And of course, Barry rode his bike to the top of a mountain.  Beautiful, isn’t it?

You want to see a few more pictures, don’t you?  Okay, just a few more…

Aahhh… I love my family.

Hunter likes cows lately.  Just about everything bigger than a dog that stands on four legs is a cow to him.  As soon as he gets a glimpse of one he moos and moos and says cow with his lips sticking out.  He really is the cutest thing that ever lived.

Since he hasn’t seen a cow close up ever before I decided today was the day he needed to have that experience.  There is a great park in Englewood (which is part of Denver) called Belleview Park that has a little petting farm.  Brenna and Logan took turns manning the camera because I was on baby patrol.

Hunter was pretty hesitant about being close to the animals.  He said cow over and over and mooed when the little calves they had were on the other side of the farm area from us or closed in a pen, but they were just too big for him up close.  He was wild about the chickens, though, and didn’t mind the goats and sheep.  He thought the pig was hilarious and laughed and laughed and tried to imitate the pig’s grunts and snorts.

The one who really had a good time was Ian.  He fell in love with this sheep and petted it there for about 10 minutes.  He didn’t mind when the white rooster tried to eat Buzz off of his shoe,

and he found a good friend in the bristly pig.

My animal loving Brenna had a good time too, and as we left she said, “I think maybe this is what I want to do when I grow up, I mean, those girls get are getting paid to take care of the animals.”  I guess being farm girls is just in our blood.  Animals just make life feel so– real, I guess.  I’ve never actually lived on a farm, but my mom grew up on one and when I was a little girl we visited my grandparents in the home where she grew up almost weekly.  I was always too self conscious to really say what I wanted or ask to help with the horses and be really involved in the workings of the place, but I would sit out in the yard and daydream about growing up and somehow inheriting that beautiful, perfect little place with its enormous sycamore trees and clothes line and peonies and berry patch and green pastures.  I really thought it was the most beautiful place on earth.  I had my wedding reception there.  Then the housing developments encroached on it and my grandparents had to sell it.  They moved farther away from town on lots of open land.  They made it beautiful, built stables and planted berries.  2 years ago now my grandpa passed away.  I remember a conversation I had with my grandma about selling that big place and moving into town closer to my mom so she wasn’t just out there all alone.  She said she’d like to, that she needed to, but that everything made her feel claustrophobic with their fences and little yards.  She said she was born a country girl and maybe she just needed the open spaces.

After that conversation I’ve wondered if maybe I was born a country girl too– if I have that yearning to live with space and trees and animals because my grandma passed it down to me– if it’s just in my blood…

Our weekend was rather rainy.  Actually it has just been rainy here lately.  Every afternoon the thunderclouds roll in from the mountains.  Where we live, kind of up on a hill 20 miles east of the mountains, we can watch the storms as they move over the city toward us.  Sunday brought torrential downpours.  Barry is such a good dad– he’s not one to let a little a lot of rain throw a wrench in our plans.

Our little homegrown fireworks show looked like this:

(That’s our new (to us) camper over to the left of the picture set up in front of our house to “dry out” from our camping trip.  The whole drying out thing took a couple of days because as soon as it dried out it rained again.)

He’s even brave, or crazy, enough to hunch over on really skinny tires and ride really fast with a bunch of other guys on skinny tires going really fast on wet slippery pavement.

The rest of us were crazy enough to go watch him.

Tonight I am…

tired from camping for 2 nights and a day.

thankful to call that cute baby up there my own.

amazed at the grandeur of the Colorado mountains and how being surrounded by them never gets old.

excited to let you know that I have a post over at the Rhythm of the Home blog.

looking forward to a restful Sabbath.

thinking about the miracle this country we live in is, and so thankful for it.

How is your weekend going?

One thing I love about our church is the program of Family Home Evening.  Every Monday evening we are encouraged to gather our families together to sing, pray, have a lesson, do something fun together, and eat yummy treats.  In our family we rotate who is in charge of each thing, so the kids get to teach lessons, choose songs, plan activities, and make treats.

Last night Jonah was in charge of the activity, and with it being the summer solstice he decided we needed to swim until sunset.

So we did.

We built sandcastles.

Hunter learned a new word.

Goose, goooooooose…

After a hot day the air had cooled off, but the water was pretty warm.  It couldn’t have been more perfect.

I am so thankful for this tradition we so faithfully keep in our family.  Gathering 5 little ones around the piano after dinner clean-up (and all the prodding and nagging that often entails) does not always feel like the fun, or sane, thing to do after a busy Monday.  Often the treat is a hurried Tupperware full of “shaker pudding” (instant Jello pudding dumped with milk into a Tupperware and shook, shook, shook by the child in charge of treat) or graham crackers dipped in milk, but by the time we have sung together, by the time a little person has taught their lesson and shared a heart felt testimony about their love for the Savior, by the time we’ve finished honoring a child’s wish to jump on the trampoline all together or play a game of Bananagrams we go to bed happier than we could have imagined in those harried minutes of wrangling.

It’s a miracle in the making…

one week at a time.