Cascade Springs

My friend Elizabeth Elder had a baby a couple of weeks ago, and today I volunteered to abduct her other five children to give her a bit of a break.  I had to borrow her minivan in order to get us anywhere, but she was happy to swap me cars if it meant I was taking her children away.  What mom wouldn't be?

I decided we would go to Cascade Springs and then up to South Fork to run around.  I forgot how long it takes to get to Cascade Springs--the turnoff is four miles past Aspen Grove and another seven miles further on from there.  But apart from some complaints about getting carsick, the children were good natured about the drive.  They sang funny songs and asked me to tell them stories, and we looked for animals (found several dead ones by the side of the road) and other interesting things out the windows.

The Springs have three short, looping trails that you can follow.  I remember the last time I was there we could see fish in the ponds, but unfortunately we saw no signs of piscine life.  The kids didn't seem to mind.  They were all good hikers, and apart from asking every 15.6 seconds when we were going to have lunch, were pleasant company.  We did all three loops and saw all the water, and as soon as we got back to the car, had to break out lunch which we ate as we drove back down the canyon.  No one could wait until we got to South Fork, but everyone ate well because there was nothing else to do while we drove.

We spent maybe an hour at South Fork running around.  The boys all found sticks and played army or guardians or something.  The little boys tagged along after the big boys.  I was able to get them back in the car with the promise of ice cream, and we stopped at Arctic Circle on the way home.  I should have gotten a picture of ice cream smeared faces, because there were plenty of them, but I was talking to Elizabeth (who met up with us) instead.  It was a fun outing for all of us.

Me, Brandt and Blythe with Collin, Ashlyn, Caleb, Brady, and Shaylee Elder

Brady (small in blue shirt) stopped at every sign we passed. 

Some had pictures and he would say, "Bird!" or "Tree!" or "Fish!"

 

Three Elders, one Barrus

 

Headed up the trail

This was the first shade we came to and everyone just plopped down on the trail.

I kept saying, "One two three, eyes on me!" to get people to look at me.

Brady hasn't been to school yet.

 

Brady is showing me he has not one, but two sticks.

Two!

Berry Picking

I have heard from several neighbors about a pick-your-own berry farm in Mapleton where you can go get raspberries and blackberries.  I have eagerly been waiting for them to open, and they did this week.  I told the children we were going to go and knew that while they would like it picking, they don't like berries so I wouldn't have to worry about them eating them.  The farm opened this week, so we went out today.

The couple who own the farm are delightful people.  The farmer got us outfitted with buckets he tied around our waists, small buckets for the kids, a big one for me, and then told us to pick away but not to feed any berries to the deer and goats in the enclosure at the end of the row.  In a little over an hour we had picked 3.5 pounds of berries, half of each kind.  The kids hung in there for a bit, but they largely entertained themselves feeding the goats leaves and sticks.

I came home and made four pints of each kind of jam.  It looks beautiful and tastes delicious.  I think I'm going to go back in a few weeks when there will be more berries and the picking will be a bit more bounteous because I'm certain we'll go through the jam really quickly!

Looking for berries to fill their little buckets.

Aren't these lovely?

Cub Scouts

Brandt is now a bear in the cub scout program, and for his first den meeting, they went up to Vivian Park to learn about a historical site, and to clean up an area.  They were killing two birds (or requirements) with one stone.  Brandt's den leader sent me this cute picture of him with Greyson Bushman and Paul Moreland.  Scrub sprouts extraordinaire!

A Crafty Afternoon

Most of the time when I try to do something clever I've seen on Pinterest, I fail.  I'm not very crafty.  Today the kids begged me to do a craft, and fortunately, I had not one, but two things we could do.  As far as the children were concerned, both turned out great.  I saw one fail and one success.

First off, we did a craft with pony beads.  We were supposed to be making sun catchers, but I failed to notice that I was supposed to buy translucent pony beads and bought opaque ones instead.  We went ahead and did the craft, and the kids thought it was great.  They arranged pony beads in patterns in our muffin tins, then we melted them in the oven.  They came out little disks instead of little sun catchers, being at that you couldn't see through them.  But Brandt and Blythe didn't care a bit and carted them off happily.  Score one for the mom?

 

Intently working on their designs.

This is what they were supposed to look like,

and this is how they turned out.

Not see through.

Pinterest fail.

Our second "crafty" activity was to make giant bubbles.  This was much more successful.  While it was a bit tricky to get the bubbles to blow, when the wind caught it just right, we had really big bubbles.  This also held the children's attention for a long time.  Hooray for summertime activities.

I took about 150 pictures of this bubble activity.  Many are of one of us holding our stringed sticks out with no bubbles in them, so those all got deleted.  And many of them are below.  I'm paring down for posterity's sake, because really, how many pictures of giant bubbles does one need?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we were outside, my neighbor Mary walked by and chatted with us.

She offered to take a picture of all three of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out that concentration!

I caught the teasing pop just before pop.