Mother's Day Weekend 2013

My Mother's Day weekend started out with a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the kids that were delivered on Friday afternoon. It makes me a little sad that I didn't get to spend Mother's Day with my kids, but we'll make up for it when we see each other in late July or August. I have been blessed with the most wonderful kids in the world, and my son-in-law, Anthony, and daughter-in-law, Cindy are just as wonderful. We have such a great time when we're all together!

Friends, Deb, Les, Roy and Lauren joined us for dinner Friday night. We laughed at the stories of Puerto Vallarta and St. Barths and ate and drank waaaay too much. We recently moved into a townhome a bit closer to town. We loved the last house we were in, but it was about fifteen minutes too far from the "action" on 4th street. We are now just one block off 4th, where we regularly patronize great neighborhood restaurants and pubs. Our favorite place is "Joyce on 4th," which is an Irish Pub with a good selection of micro brews and decent food. Thursday night is "Steak Night." We get a pretty darn good steak about every third time we go (we go every Thursday). Whada-you-want for five bucks?

On Sunday, Jim took me on our first long hike of the season. We hiked a 14.5 km (9 mile) loop called Prairie View Trail. At one point in the hike, Jim asked if we were hiking all the way to Prairie View A &M? No Honey, it just felt like it. We decided to hike the loop in a clockwise direction and didn't pass a single group on the way up. When we reached the top, there were quite a few people up there and we wondered how that was possible since we were the only car in the parking lot when we started out. Welllll...apparently everyone else hiked the loop going counter clockwise, which was the much steeper direction. Thank God we chose to go up the opposite way because that was challenging enough for us this early in the season! We had a pretty steep descent, but the views on the way down were spectacular.

Enjoy the pictures!

My beautiful flowers from the kids. Yes, that is an apron I'm wearing. I am a domestic Goddess after all.

Dinner party with Roy, Deb, Les, me, Jim and Lauren in front.

The start of our hike at Barrier Lake.

Beautiful Barrier Lake with azure blue glacier water.

Parts of the trail cross frozen streams. Parts of the trail were just as frozen.

This frozen stream will be a beautiful waterfall in about three weeks.

Finally at the top!

Atop McConnell Ridge looking southwest

We had lunch at the peak of McConnell Ridge.

Our lunch spot was at the very top of the rock ridge on the right.

A zoomed in view of the ridge.

A view of Kananaskis river on the way down. Aren't the clouds beautiful?

Jim coming down the mountain (that's why he looks so happy).

Panoramic view of the Barrier Lake valley, amazing clouds.

View of Mt Baldy behind Barrier Lake

Is that Don Johnson? (It was a bit windy when we got down to lake level).