All in one day...

Morning of October 24th.

Night of the October 24th.

 

Sean ready for the Snow...anytime...any day.

Fall Break

Daniel's Park

Garden of the Gods

 

We had our first visitors from Washington!  During fall break and we were lucky enough to have Grandma and Grandpa Granger, and cousin Charlie Allen come down and spend 5 days with us.  We loved every minute of it!

                                                                                             Joel was way excited because Charlie was here...finally! While they were together:  bike to the park, swim at the Rec. Center, play wii, biked around the neighborhood, play crazy boy games at the park until dark, hiked through huge rocks, climbed up steep sides of mountains, built Bionicles.  They were sufficiently busy to get even Charlie to go to bed by 10pm and sleep in until 8am!  That is saying something...     Charlie made a great comment...It is so lucky that the weather is good during your fall break AND we are here too!  Well Charlie, the sun is out nearly every day, but we did have a great week of weather...64 degrees feels more like 74 degrees in the fall.

Rock Canyon State Park, not far from Castle Rock, was a small, beautiful little valley with some great hikes.  We had an early dinner and let the kids loose.  Sean, G & G Granger and I went to see if we could actually get to some caves we saw in the cliff.  Here is documentation that they did do the hike and they made it about 3/4 of the way up.   

                                                     




On the way up to Pikes Peak



Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods and the top of Pikes Peak were some highlights of the trip.





 G Granger was a little white knuckled on that drive, and the winds were 25 mph and VERY cold up there.  But a stunning view, of course.

Thank you for coming!! We love you!

Wild-things...

 Prairie Dogs...they are all over in the open spaces around here.  They are cute in their own little critter type way...but for some reason my boys think they'd like to pick them off...one by one...with some type of fire stick

 Wild Turkeys...I never thought they were really wild in the west.  It was rather a shock to see them for the first time...pecking/grazing on the open range.

Bull Snake...there you have it...go get those mice and other varmit (gibb farm-term for vermin).

There is the occasional rabbit and squirrels.





Every now and again we will see one of these...or a cousin. They are too quick to sneak up on.
There has been a black bear sighted in our area and some elk over across the way.  OH...I did see some antelope roaming the range on the way to the airport the other day.  The song is right. Just haven't located those buffalo...yet.


 

Autumn

Autumn...one of my favorite times of the year.  The changing of the leaves and crispness in the air is refreshing. 

Since we are not surrounded by trees here in Colorado, you can see the beautiful mountain range almost everywhere you drive.  In the mountains the Aspen are beautiful  in the summer, with their white bark and quaking green leaves.  They are stunning, though, when their backdrop is the dark evergreen and their leaves turn a vibrant yellow.

The trees that are showing their colors now are the oak and scrub oak.  The scrub oak are the small bushy-shrub-like trees that dot the open areas. 

The pictures here are on the way to Kaleb's middle school.  The homes here have been here a little while longer than in my neighborhood, so these big beautiful trees make it a very nice drive.

I haven't made it to see the colors in the mountains...it is on my to do list...