Elevensies

Today was the girl's eleventh birthday. She thought she was going to school, as if it was a normal day. When we dropped off her brother at school I told her not to get out of the car. We headed off to the mountains to a zip line/sky bridge course about 40 minutes away. She didn't know what we were doing, until we meet our instructors and stepped into our harnesses. Hubby wanted to go with us, but he wasn't able to get the day off. After a practice run, we were anxious to get on the course. We did 8 zip lines that were at 100-180 feet high and three sky bridges. It was a two hour tour of beautiful landscape and fun. Since we had the place to ourselves, it was extra special.

The zip line instructors were teaching the girl to hang off the side of the platform using her feet for balance. Once they found out she was a daredevil and not afraid of heights, they did a bunch of extra stuff with her.

They would "slingshot" her off of the zip line platform. A slingshot is where they grab you, pull you back and let you go. She would get this big grin on her face and let out a little "whoop" of glee as she went speeding along.

Here the girl is playing around on the zip line. The instructors would push her out from the platform and then she would hand over hand her way back to the platform. She loved it! After a fun morning hanging out in the tree tops, we headed off to lunch at a local little "cowboy" restaurant and then topped off our day of playing hookey with some ice cream. Happy Birthday to my little girl. I had such a great time hanging out with you today!

The Lost Weekend

On a neighbors farm are the remnants of a French Utopian colony. They were kind enough to take us on a tour. By tour I mean let us run around to our hearts content.

There were a surprising number of ruins over 7 acres.

It was a beautiful spring day, perfect for a hike.

The boy riding in our neighbors polaris.

The girl found this laying not far from the ruins. There is still twine on the wooden spool. Our best guess is that it was a kite spool. There is still a lot of paint on it.

The perfect end to the day was this bouquet of wildflowers the girl surprised me with.