It's What Saturday's are For

It's been a week.  Quite a week.  Quite a draining, emotional, crazy cycle week and frankly, I am glad to have it behind me.  Without going into too much detail, let's just say that stress and chaos make me feel sad, depressed and honestly, hopeless.  Sometimes the chaos seems to be localized in my own head which doesn't help either because it creates a problem trying to communicate the issues.  Doesn't anyone else get what is going on inside my head?  Oh yeah, its my head.  Seriously, I am ready to pack my bags and take a vacation from my own self for a while.  Yeesh.  I would really like to blame it entirely on hormones.  Yeah, those raging little buggers that find it funny to toy with you even into your  almost 30's.  Gotta love the week where your face looks like it just took its first look into puberty and you feel so crazy that even a toddler's outburst in Target seems justifiable.  "You go ahead and throw yourself on that floor, I understand and it is totally not crazy to scream and hit things because you could not hold those sunglasses.  I am with you!"  I even had a moment wondering what would happen if I totally joined in with her.  "Whatever, we are already getting the once over by everyone in the store at this point I am all in, AHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHH (flailing arms and whining noises)."   It's just been that kind of week.

The mountains were just what I needed and yesterday all of us Longmires packed our backpacks and headed to Golden Gate State Park.  My first thought when we got to the park was, "How have I lived here for most of my life and never been here?"  Wow it was beautiful and so close to Denver.  The weather was perfect and cool, we could not have asked for a better morning.  Lily simply could not wait to go hiking and told us that very fact all the way up to the trail, "Daddy, packack, hikine, muntain, packack!"

It was a beautiful hike up to the Forgotten Valley.

 The Valley is an old homestead that still remains intact.  It was built in the 1800's when a Swedish Family came and settled it.  Gosh I just love history and it is so cool to step onto the property and see the primitive way people used to live.  Boy do we have it easy.  The original farmhouse is still there.  You can't go in, but they set up great porch swings that you can sit on and look out over the pond on the property.  Ah what a life, so peaceful, so serene.  Just what I needed.

Lily was on and over everything.  I am loving my camera and trying to capture her every moment, but many times it is a challenge trying to capture the constant movement.  There are those times though where everything alines and I get amazing pictures of this little precious being.  Exhibit A, B, C and D.

Gosh what a cutie!

After exploring the entire homestead and finding miscellaneous mountain treasures, we headed back.  Miss Independent was all about "hikine" on her own so we let her manuever her way over the bumpy, rocky trail for a while.

It was short lived considering we only went 30 feet in 10 minutes, but she had a blast picking up every rock, running back and forth and jumping off of all the big flat rocks she could find.  She LOVES the outdoors and I LOVE being out with her.

Ahhh, last week is over, time to start fresh.