Ahh, 4th of July at the ranch! This was our first 4th with 6 new Heidmanns, and we had a blast. No, not literally. We didn’t even have any sparklers, or things that go pop. We just played, played, played. We drove up early Wednesday morning and had the day to run around the ranch. And Wednesday night, we watched the St. John’s fireworks from the cabin door – noise-and-crowd-free pretties!
On this trip, I indulged in an extravagance of sunset pics. There’s nothing quite like the brilliant colors of an Arizona monsoon sunset!! I also allowed the boys to take the camera a few times, so that got me some extra photos I wouldn’t otherwise have captured – mostly landscape, some lovely closeup shots of foliage, and a couple cute shots of Ruben. I came home with 648 images and whittled it down to 303, which is pretty good whittling. 🙂
Some Thursday morning pics down by the “Tum-Tum Tree” – as Daddy has finally, after all these years, dubbed the tree by the picnic table. A dragonfly got caught in the ketchup on a plate left out from the night before, which allowed me to get some closeups. Also got some lovely afternoon cloud shots.
I worked hard on using my manual settings this trip, and I think I’ve made some great progress. I’m pretty psyched about that because I had basically given up on even hoping I could figure it out.
This was our first trip to the ranch since the adoption. That means it was the first chance we had to give the kids some lessons in gun safety and shooting practice. I realize this is probably controversial for some people, but for our family, it’s a priority to teach our kids from an early age to respect guns, to handle them with proper care and only with supervision. They all were delighted to have their first chance to shoot “Little Richard” – Grandpa Richard’s .22 rifle (which now belongs to Jacob). They were shooting at cans, and I think the only one that hit anything was Xavier, but that’s ok. The first time out is about getting a feel for how it works anyway.
