A Perfect Autumn Adventure

Yesterday after church I made us a picnic lunch, we changed into some matchy matchy clothes and we all piled into the van for a lovely sunday afternoon drive!  I had originally asked Jared if we could go for a drive through the Kananaskis to see all the beautiful fall colours before all the leaves fell off the trees.  He thought it would be too far for one afternoon, which I did agree, so instead he suggested we go for a drive west of Claresholm up to the forestry area where we have gone to get a Christmas tree in the past!  I readily agreed so off we went!  Once we got into the forestry area we decided to drive up to the ridge and have our picnic lunch there where there would be a great panoramic view!  And what a view it was, the clear blue sky, the orange, yellows and greens of the trees cascading down the foothills, cars driving the highway far off in the distance, the sounds of birds and wind rustling through the trees!  It was a gorgeous day, and reminded me of when we would go out to Waterton for Thanksgiving, a crisp yet refreshing fall day!  The cool air puts a reddish hue in our cheeks, while the warmth of the sun still warms us to the core!  Oh it was a wonderful day, I truly feel close to heaven on days like that!  The kids had fun exploring and taking pictures and just looking around at all nature has to offer!  We did take some family pictures which all turned out quite cute and I think they will make a beautiful addition to our wall above the stairs!

This was the first picture we took, and I loved the composition, it's too bad the sun wasn't in front of us!!

Having our picnic! 

He is quite the boy, I was happy I was able to capture this funny face!

We thought about taking the highway all the way up to Longview, but once we finished our picnic we were ready to head toward home so instead we turned east at Chain Lakes and headed into Nanton, making our journey a little shorter but still a lot of fun!  We got home just before 7:00pm while the sun was just making its decent behind the mountains and the lighting on the big poplar tree at the corner of our drive was magnificent!  So again we all piled out of the van to take some more pictures!  I honestly think those pictures turned out much better than the ones taken in the foothills!  We had fun and Emry desperately wanted to take mine and Jared's picture, which we had fun doing!  Then we headed over to the bale yard to try some pictures against the stack of hay bales.  This too was fun...Calum and Armin were gathering wood to make a campfire and had fun scouring the ground for sticks and grass!  They will make good mountain men when they are older because it seemed like even at their young ages they knew exactly what to do!  Thank goodness neither of them had any matches or the cows may not have had any food for the winter!!