Landscapes

This is a picture of the mares and foals I told you I always drive by on the work. You can see some of them, but there are a lot more than I could get in this picture.

This is a picture of the buildings at RightNow. I’m in the one that’s furthest left, but you can’t really see it, because there’s a climbing building in front of it. 

Olivia

The other morning, my dad was up getting ready for work. I had already left. He hears a little “knock knock” on the door, and he heads over to open it. Before he can even get there, the person knocks again. He opens the door, and there stands little Olivia, our neighbor. She’s about four years old, and she has the most orange hair you’ve ever seen on a little kid, and these bright blue eyes.

“Hi,” she says to my dad, as she walks in the house, “I saw you through the window.” She points at the window by the front door. “I came over to ask you why your sprinklers are on.” she walks towards the back sliding glass door to show him the sprinklers that he already knows are on.

“Do your parents know you’re over here?” he asks her.
“No, they’re sleeping still.” He of course doesn’t question this, and continues going about getting ready for work as she sits down in one of the stools on the counter and starts to eat some blueberries that are sitting in a bowl there.

The next morning, she came over again, and this time, she sat in the garage with Wesley, asking him questions as he worked on his truck. “Can we go down in your basement and play with the toys down there?”

Then, a few mornings ago, she got there so early that I hadn’t even left for work yet. She was sitting at the counter again, talking away. She had a different reason for being there this time. “I came over to see why the camper is still in front of my house. I thought my friends left, but it’s still here.” Her family has friends visiting who drive a big RV that they stay in.

I asked her if she wanted some toast, and she said, “Yes, I would like some toast.”
She sat there and talked away, as we all went about getting ready for work. Such a funny little kid.

She was so cooperative when I pulled out the camera and said, “Smile!” but as soon as I lowered it, she commented, “You know, I don’t always like it when people take my picture.”

Hail Storm 8/1/11

This was the storm that came through today that I mentioned to you. This is the view from the screened in porch, you can see all the hail coming down. It was pretty cool, this is the most hail I’ve seen for a long time.

Here are some pieces of the hail my dad and I ran out and grabbed during the storm. There was that one monster piece that was a little bigger than a golf ball. COOL!!!!

VT trip

These are a few pics from the biking Jon and I did in VT. These two are both of some trails we rode through a granite quarry in Barre, VT. The left one is at the top of a hill with a pretty cool lookout. The right one is another lookout over the quarry which is pretty cool. There was a lot of really nice scenery for this ride.

The picture on the left here is of me coming down a couple pretty cool bridges that they had made also in the trails through the quarry. There were a lot of these that made cat walks, jumps, and even some banked turns on big downhill trails, so that was really cool. The picture on the right was of part of the trail as we were coming down the hill in Jon’s town, Waterbury, VT. The beginning of that ride started with 45 minutes uphill. No Joke, 45 mins, the first 25 or so were murder. Straight up hill and the ground was kinda sandy. I wasn’t quite ready. He told me there were some hills but I didn’t realize you had to ride up a mountain to get to the start of the trails. But, it was really nice once we made it up hill because the trails were mostly downhill from there. Really had to earn it though.


These pictures are of the first spot we went swimming at, in between our two bike rides. The first of which was in Jonny’s town with the huge hill, so swimming was really nice because it was pretty hot that day too. The one on the left is looking upstream, above all the waterfalls. I wish I could have taken my camera to the bottom to really give you perspective of this spot. There were 3 waterfalls with pools in between and then a big pool at the bottom. The picture on the right is of the pool we jumped into. It was on the second tier of this waterfall succession, and it was only 7 or 8 feet deep. Which made it kinda fun to jump in because you really had to make a “J” shape as you jumped into the water so that you wouldn’t slam the bottom.

Lunch with My Mom

We went to Huckleberry’s for lunch, which is a little restaurant inside of a grocery store (Rosauers, which my mom always accidentally calls Roberts because that was the name of the grocery store we went to in Madison). See how healthy I am? 😉 Mac and cheese, onion rings, moz sticks. 

Chris + Rachel