Soda Springs

This weekend we took a semi-impromptu trip up to Soda Springs. I say semi-impromptu because we had planned to go a week ago, but when we were all feeling under the weather this week (yay head cold season), our decision to go was up in the air until noon on Saturday.

Derek's cousin Chad is the proud father of the darling little girl above who just turned one, so her little party was just the excuse we needed to head up to Idaho. We spent the afternoon enjoying the ranch, wandering around and taking... ahem... over 500 pictures on my baby, the Rebel. I got all artsy in some, others were just practice with settings and still others were just us taking as many pictures as we could in hopes of getting one or two that looked good. As it happens, I've already deleted a substantial amount of the bummers... but it still took a lot to narrow it down to a mere 10... make that 14... no, wait... 20 pictures to post here! So enjoy our photographic journey around the ranch with our girls. (Maybe you can tell we were digging the B&W...) On a side note, of all of our pictures, I was least impressed with the ones at the party. I couldn't seem to account for the lighting in the best way and I was kind of disappointed... I was hoping to get some great shots.

Here we have my little Avril squeezing through the cattle chute in the corral. Let me just mention here, that somehow, I, too was able to squeeze my ever-expanding body through this all-too-narrow space. I tried to get her to look up at me, I think it would have made a rad pic if we actually had her face in it, but I still think it looks cool.


Throwing babies is always a good time.

Derek surveys his domain atop the cattle chute. I think he looks pretty hot...


Snuggle-break. We took a family ride on a four-wheeler out here and played around. After our snuggle-break, the baby promptly went and got stuck in some mud, which she found quite distressing.

There's an old chicken coop that allowed for some great photo ops, both with the girls and on it's own as the artsy type thing. Derek was looking for stickers in Avril's shoe while the girls looked on.


Me next to the coop.

This super cool old-school semi was parked out there, so naturally Avril wanted to get in and try it out.


That's right.

Xandri was bummed when I took her off the 4-wheeler when she and Avril started fighting... but sitting on the tractor cheered her up immensely. Of course, Avril couldn't miss out...

We took off into the pasture to check out the horses. The girls LOVED them! Xandri was practically crying because I wasn't getting her to the horses fast enough.

Yeah, remember the crying from being to slow? Nothing compared to the crying when we took her off this horse! Avril was not to be out done and obviously required her own little "ride".

Meanwhile, Derek had gone back to get the horses some oats. This turned out to be a potential mistake... at least it made me really nervous when ALL the horses decided it was time to come over and shove their noses in the bowl. I'm not gonna lie, there was a little jumping and kicking going on. My imagination took a wild ride as I pictured our broken and bloodied bodies lying in the aftermath... As it happened, one horse seemed to be protecting us- which made me feel slightly better. Derek handed the bucket over to Avril... she held onto it for a few minutes, then when it got to be too much, she ditched it and watched from a distance!

The girls got a hands-on lesson in climbing fences and ample opportunity to practice.


Too bad this outhouse has been out of commission for too long...



And let's go ahead and top off the day with a piece of five-layer cake!