biking around

Lilja is riding her bike to keep up with me walking barney far... I gotta work, she has to learn to bike ..perfect combination !!

the best job in the world !!

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is running a black bear research project in Durango to investigate human and bear interactions among other things. Sometimes the bears involved in the project end up denning on the reservation. When that happens, tribal wildlife assists CPW with working up the bears; essentially giving them their annual exam. The best part is when there are new cubs!

excited for albuquerque

Our familycation !!

So aran needed to take some time off, so we decided to go to albuquerque for a long weekend . We were excited to stay in a hotel with a pool and go to the albuquerque zoo and old town. Well the weekend did not start out as we planned. The hotel was smaller than we thought and looked out on the pool that was open till 10, yes, with lots of people having fun.. the old town restaurants were ....interesting ..first one was covered in dust, so we left , second one did not gave margaritas (what!!) And the third one had rancid meat.. yep aran was really worried about me for a while . But after we swam and slept the weekend became amazing . The zoo was great and Luke the koala was walking around , the monkey were soooo cute, we had a great lunch at the aquarium in front of the biggest tank ever, sooooo cool and just had a great time. Oh and ofcourse went swimming again that night.. with 20 other people in a small pool. Lilja could not stop giggling and says that swimming was her favorite part. All and all we had a great time, spend some quality time as a damily, laughed and joked.. so fun . The funniest part was sleeping with lilja in the room. We had two queen beds and lilja wanted ne to sleep in her bed, so I did. We'll it took a while fir ger to go to sleep as I would feel a little hand on my cheek stroking my cheek or I would open my eyes and her nose was almost touching mine. I still laugh at that. Just such fun memories !

albuquerque family trip

The albuquerque natural science and history museum was one of the best museums we have gone to. Even better than denver, smaller but more interactive and clearer in the story of earth's birth and the story of the dinosaurs.we also had a little time to see a movie about the earth, moon and the sun in a full surround panorama movie. First one for lilja.. she loved it .

Very intense face, she was not sure about this but got more comfortable as the movie started 

Walking into the planetarium, not sure about it .

Pretending to be a dinosaur in a nest 

How little does she look..and tired ?

Ofcourse aran wanted to touch all the cool things in the naturalist center ....for kids 

Prints of all the animals 

Posing with Stan

So excited to go to the museum !

Our big girl

Oh how we love this girl. She is so smart, sweet and funny!! So lucky to be her parents !! 

this weekend

We got a little bit of snow out of the big snowmeggeddon we should have gotten. So ofcourse we played in the snow. But as you can see on the pictures of walking barney, the snow was off the roads pretty fast and turned into mud !

This is rachel and lilja having some popcorn and hot chocolate after playing in the snow . Rachel is one of lilja's friends from school and they are becoming real good buddies , she is very sweet to Lilja.. so now we trade playdates.

Oh that smile !!

The Two Best Friends .. For Ever As Rachel says with  her  arms  open wide.

This swing is the best 

Walking barney in the mud.. 

Best thing about working on a ranch..david, the caretaker taking lilja to see a 5 minute old calf .. he is right there lying between the cows... soooo cute!!

Lots of sledding hills around, but where does lilja play with ryan, a friends son...the slide ofcourse 

At the end of the way down..very fast ..with alison 

Action shot walking or I guess running barney.. she was trying to wrap the leash around me.. just to make it fun..

Barney did surprisingly well with lilja on the lead.  Still fun to have that one on one with lilja .