My goat ropers

Last Friday, Colby and Jen needed help milking their goats while they took one of their baby goats to get dehorned. Eric volunteered for the job, much to my amazement. They have three goats that needed milked. The first one was a learning experience, but Eric got the hang of it pretty quickly. By the second and third goat, he was a regular pro!

The happy goat milker

This is Cinnamon (or Cimonim as Ayden calls her). Isn't she cute!

Anna with Cocoa

Ayden with Isabella

See, two hands. What a pro!

Lake Shasta Caverns

The day before we came home from Redding, we visited Lake Shasta Caverns. The tour included a short boat ride across the lake, a scenic bus ride up to the cave entrance and a one hour tour of the cave.

We had a short hike down to the water. This is the view from where we waited for the boat to arrive.

This is the view from Jen's camera

This is the view from my camera

The boat ride over

The view from the mountain was really beautiful. These next two pictures were taken by Jennifer.

We got a great view of the marina from our bus ride up the mounain.

:op

Eric took this one from where we were just before we entered the caverns.

It was pretty dark inside the cavern. The flash from the cameras is deceiving.

Finally in the caverns

I love this picture!

Proof that I was there, too

All these formations have names, but I couldn't tell you what they are. I was too busy taking pictures and trying not to trip or hit my head to really listen to the guide. All of these photos will be much cooler if you double click on them to make them larger.

I didn't realize it when I took this picture, Eric actually pointed it out when he saw the photo on the computer, but this formation looks like a fox!

I do know what this is called! It's peanut brittle. Ok, so I cheated, there is a plaque right there that says it. This stuff is so cool, you definitely need to look at this picture larger!

Inside the cavern it seemed like the steps never ended! There are eight different rooms varying in size from really little to really big. You have to climb (or go down in some cases) steps to go from one room to another. I bet there were a couple of hundred steps in all. The guys who poured the steps in the early '60s had to carry the cement mix into the cavern in 5 gallon buckets. This only allowed them to pour two steps before they had to go refill their bucket. Talk about dedication!

This was taken in the biggest room, called the Cathedral Room. It was really quite large and beautiful.

This was taken by the guide

There wasn't time for the guide to take our picture inside the Cathedral room because the next tour group was right on our tails, so Colby took this for us when we got out of the cavern.

The parting shot. This is so cool. The soil around this old tree root has been washed away leaving the roots exposed. It looks like it could crawl away.

A special request

This is my sis-in-law Jennifer's new favorite picture of me. She requested that I post it in my blog, so here goes. Enjoy!

Sundial Bridge

The day after we arrived in Redding we did some sight seeing before the conferrence started. At the suggestion of a friend of mine, we visited Sudial Bridge. Sundial Bridge is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Sacramento River. It was beautiful and really neat (thanks for telling me about it, Kelly).

The deck is made up of aqua green, opaque glass tiles.

One of the glass tiles was shattered

The 217-foot pylon acts as a sundial, telling time on a tile covered garden border on the north side of the bridge.

You can walk down a path and go underneath the bridge. This is a sculpture that was down there.

A sampling of the garden

a purple fire hydrant

I thought we were taking a nice picture. Little did I know that my husband is really a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 30-year-old's body.

Oh no Colby, not you too!