Abbott Ridge

View of Avalanche, Eagle, Uto and Sir Donald from the Abbott Ridge trail.

 "What? Is there something on my face?"

 Marion Lake

 Pika! Easily the cutest animal in these mountains.

 Sue and Sir Don

Birthdays

Cassia's fairy Godmother came out for a visit. They share a birthday, so Cassia got to celebrate her first one with a good friend.

 Cassia really wanted to touch the flame. I guess blowing it out isn't intuitive.

New blocks are a hit.

Cassia got a birthday ride in the cruiser's basket. She also got to watch our new shed get moved to our yard by a crane which pleased her very much.

The Great Shed Move of 2012

 Our neighbours had a shed that they were keen to get rid of and James has been after a man space nice workshop for awhile now. So, a plan to move a shed was concocted.

 A nice shed pad was built.

 Crane-man finally arrived on the morning of our daughter's first birthday (what else would you be doing on such a day?). We threw a couple of loops around the shed and were ready for lift-off.

 The shed takes flight.

 He turned the shed 90 degrees to sit it on the flatbed truck.

 And then it was a matter of merely driving over to our yard...


Shed Move I from Nature Nerd on Vimeo.
Here is some action packed video footage of the shed going down the 'hill' into our yard. 

 Shed just making it between our ponderosa pine and the neighbour's trailer.

 And here it is ready to be lifted off and spun 90 degrees into place.


Shed Move II from Nature Nerd on Vimeo.

 Soft landing.

The whole thing took 1.5 hours and went surprisingly smoothly.

A lot of Leos

A flock of Leos turned one this month. We had a group party for them in the park. I hope we're still doing this in 10 years time! (Photo by Ryan, babies entertained by Michaela.)

 Olive getting mischievious.

 A Virgo, but we let her come to the party since she's so cute.

 J giving me his serious look.

 Starting to crack...

 Ha! Made ya smile.

 Taking a break from the heavy partying.

 See if you can resist those big brown eyes.

 Way advanced in the reading department. This book has a soft cover. Cassia would eat it for breakfast. Actually, she would just tear it to bits, she doesn't really like solid foods for breakfast.

Olive looking intellectual while reading her book... upside-down.
Cassia, not bothering with the intellectual look so much.

 And no party is complete without a round of peek-a-boo with Dad.

Margie Lake

We decided to tackle backpacking with a kid and  hiked into Margie Lake in Monashee Provincial Park.

I carried Cassia, and some stuff.

And James carried everything else, which he was pretty happy about, being a "go heavy" enthusiast.

Snack time!

Catching dinner... almost. I guess the lovely pair of loons on the lake stole all of the fish.

Cassia was pretty thrilled with the amount of outdoors in the outdoors.

Jumping off rocks while on Dad's shoulders was a very popular activity.

Meanwhile, I filled the memory card with pictures of anemones and glacier lilies.

We hiked up to a peak the following day for some spectacular views of the Monashees.

More interested in the bag of salami than the views. 

Cool rock folds.

Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.

On another note, the scratches on our camera lens have become un-ignorable, especially when shooting into the sun or in video mode, so our Canon G10 has been shipped off for a lens overhaul. Boo. And I am too tired to figure out how to centre this video. Double boo.

Overall the location was great for a first-time-with-a-wee-one backpacking trip - short hike in, few bugs, crawling-friendly campsite, great day hike options and not too far from town (~3 hrs from Revelstoke). The downside was that the logging road to get there was a bit challenging, ending in some impressive alder-bashing as depicted above.