Backpacking in the Rocky Mountains

I have been meaning to blog about this trip for, oh about a month now haha, but somehow time got away from me and I never got it done.  Fair warning, it might be a long post, but if you read to the end you should get a good laugh.

Tony and I had SO much fun on our trip to Colorado. After my last day with the boys, I picked Tony up at the house and we headed straight to the airport. Our flight was delayed half an hour so we had just enough time to get a yummy Papa's burger before we took off.  We got to CO around 9pm and spent the evening hanging out with my parents and planning out our backpacking trip for the next day (by planning I mean Tony and my dad looked over maps and planned out our trip, I just hung out haha).

We got up the next morning and drove about 3 hours out to San Isabel National Forest. My dad had warned us that the whole state had been getting afternoon showers just about every day, so he made sure to send us off with rain gear. Once we got to the trail head we put on our packs, walked about 10 feet from the car and it started POURING. Since we didn't have our rain gear out yet, we ran back to the car and jumped in just as the hail started. We ended up waiting out the hail/ rain for about 15 minutes. Once it died down, we pulled out the rain gear, loaded up with our packs, and started our hike.  Within 5 minutes my legs were on fire and I thought there was no way I was possibly going to make it.  Turns out hiking uphill with a 28 pound pack on your back is not quite the same as hiking a flat trail in Houston! hehe. We hiked up the first incline, then continued off on the path. The whole time we were hiking there was a pretty steady heavy drizzle and we kept commenting that the trail was much more difficult to manovur than my dad had said. The trail was no more than 12 inches wide, there was brush scratching your skin the whole way, and it was very windy and up and down. We went on like this for awhile, stopping once for lunch and to wait out some heavy rain under a tree, then continued on for about 2 1/2 hours.

All of a sudden our tiny trail opened up into a large clearing, and the trail disappeared (luckily, the rain disappeared at this point as well)! We put our packs down to take a break and wandered around the clearing for about 30 minutes trying to find the trail, but it was no where to be found. Tony got out our maps and started triangulating our position; good thing I had an expert navigator with me otherwise this would have been the time to panic! Based on the position of the mountains, and our proximity to the river, Tony was able to pinpoint exactly where we were.  He finally looked at me and explained "the trail is gone and I'm not sure why, but we're here (points to map), and we need to get here (points again) to where the two trails merge. We need to go that way (points which direction to go) so we have two choices: we can camp here all weekend, or you can trust me not to get you lost and follow me". I told him I trusted him and would follow him, so we got our packs back on. Right at this moment we heard voices coming up over the ridge in front of us! Turns out, Tony was exactly right with his navigating. The people were coming from exactly the way he had pointed! He's so smart hehe.  We ended up having to truck it up an extremely steep hill (I was literally crawling up it at one point) but once we reached the top we were on a large, clearly marked trail (which was what my dad had said the whole trail would be like). We hiked on for about an hour more, and then stopped to set up camp for the night.

While we were setting up camp (and I was trying to dry out my shoes by the fire since Tony made me truck it through a stream!), a large group passed by with 2 llamas! I stopped and talked to the two guide girls and they let me take pictures of the llamas. Apparently they can carry up to 80 pounds so they are great to take on long hikes. Who knew?!? I thought they were pretty cool! As soon as we got our fire going and camp set up, it started to POUR again so we quickly hopped in the tent and waited out the rain for about half an hour. It ended up clearing up and we were able to restart the fire and spent the evening cooking, hanging out, and looking at stars.

The next morning we fixed breakfast then started off on a day hike to a lake my dad had recommended we see. This was the hardest hike I have ever been on! It was 4 miles to the lake and completely uphill. The whole trail was rocky, and really quite steep!  Each time we would start up a huge incline I would motivate myself to keep moving with the hope that the lake was right at the top. Each time we got to the top of a hill, it would be followed by another hill. This went on for hours! FINALLY, just as I was about to give up, we made it to the lake! We set up my hammock, ate some lunch, and took a nap. It was so chilly by the lake as we had hiked up to about 12,000 feet (we started at 9,000ft). After the nap we hiked back to camp, packed up, and moved to a campsite a little closer to the trailhead to make the next day's hike a little shorter. We had a short rainstorm that evening, which gave me a great excuse to take a nap in the tent, then made a fire, ate, and overall had a nice evening.

On Sunday we woke up, made breakfast, then packed up camp to head back to the car. We started hiking and when we got to the place we had trucked it up that huge hill we commented that we were interested to see where the trail we were on met up with the trail we took that first day. We wondered how we had missed the trail so we were tracking on my phone to see where the trail met.  Well, we kept hiking and hiking and hiking and finally realized that the two trails did not actually meet. The trail we were on was steep, but was well marked and much more like what my dad had mentioned. When we got to the end of the trail we came across this:

turns out, after that very first incline we hiked the first day, we crossed right over these sticks and followed something that was NOT the trail at all for 3 hours rather than go on the actual trail, which did a 180 turn and zig zagged up to the top of the ridge. hahahaha! We quite literally hiked off the trail the ENTIRE way!! We think we must have been on some type of game trail, because it was an actual trail of some sort, but not the one that has been cleared out for people to hike. So while we were hiking down in the riverbed the first day, we should have been hiking up on the ridge. Too freaking funny! We got a lot more than we bargained for, for sure! Looking back at our maps there was no way to have known because our trial literally paralleled the real trail, they were just 100 yards apart (though one was at a higher elevation). At least Tony knew he was supposed to be following the river, otherwise we could have been lost in the mountains!

When we got back to the house we got out my camera to look at all the pictures. We got to the second picture I took of the day and laughed out loud:



look familiar?!?! this is how we missed the 180 degree turn. We hiked up the first incline, were tired and took a break on this rock, then because we were sitting we didnt notice the trail turned behind us and just got up and continued down the trail straight ahead.  Unbelievable. My dad laughed at us when we told him the story. Heck, I'm still laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

Free Photography Sessions

I guess I should mention this here, because I just realized I haven't already, but if any of you who read this (and I really have no idea who reads this to begin with haha), have kids, live in the Houston area, and would like to have some photos taken of them for free, please let me know. I am working on portfolio building and would love to get some practice on your children! You might get some great photos, and hey, it's free, so what have you got to lose! Thanks! :)

Photography Blog

So this is still a work in progress, but I set up a separate blog for photography related posts. Seems this might be something I'll want to do on the side for awhile (and who knows, maybe full time one day) so I thought it would be a good idea to have a separate professional blog that I can direct people to in order to see my previous work, or pictures I've taken for them. Feel free to follow it if you'd like.

It's http://kerrimccormackphotography.blogspot.com/

Not much on it right now (in fact the posts there are just copied from here thus far); as I said, it's a work in progress, but it'll get there.

Oh, and if anyone is good at designing brands/logos you could make me something fancy that says Kerri McCormack Photography to use on my header and I'd love you forever! :)

Samer and Siblings

Here is part two of my shoot with baby Samer. After taking pictures of just him, we took a few with his brother and sister. Farris and Leenah were such good sports through the whole thing. They helped make their little brother laugh and did whatever I asked them to. I honestly had no idea how hard it would be to get two kids and a baby all looking at the camera at the same time though! Even with awesomely well behaved kids, it was quite a challenge. We managed to get in a few good shots though, and their mom was happy with the preview she got so far so I guess it was a success! :)

Here is a preview of The A family kids:

This one is my favorite!

Sweet siblings loving on their baby brother

Such a challenge to get them all looking toward me at once! Especially when Samer was already worn out from his photo shoot

I had to include this picture because I just love sweet Samer's face! It cracks me up every time I look at it.

Samer - 7 Months

Yesterday I had the privilege of photographing the sweet son of one of the wonderful ladies that I work with, Kristine. Baby Samer just turned 7 months old, and just started sitting up on his own last week, so I knew it would be the perfect time to snap some pictures of him. You would never know he just learned how to sit up though, he was sitting like a champ! What a sweet, happy little boy Samer is! He let us pose him however we wanted and never fussed a single time. His sweet older siblings were there to help make him laugh, and boy did they ever!

I've heard photographers say that around 6 months is their favorite age to photograph, and now I see why! Babies this age are so happy and full of personality, but are not yet big enough to crawl away from the camera hehe!

Thank you so much Kristine for sharing your sweet baby with me for the morning! I hope you enjoy this preview!

Stay tuned for pictures of sweet Samer and his siblings together :)

What Super Heroes Do

When my brother was little, he had this adorable catchphrase that he said all the time, "that's just what little boys do".

"Woody, why are you playing with those animals in the bathtub?"

"that's just what little boys do!"

Cutest thing in the world!

Here's my updated take on that, in picture form: That's What Super Heroes Do!

Super Heroes pose for pictures

Super Heroes joke around with their brothers

Super Heroes play baseball

Super Heroes Blow Bubbles

Super Heroes mow the lawn

Super Heroes learn their letters

Super Heroes read books

Can you tell these boys love their capes?!? They seriously wear them ALL the time! It doesn't matter what we are doing, they are playing super heroes and wearing the capes. Makes me smile! :)

Chick-fil-A Cow Day!

Every year Chick-fil-A has a promotion one day in July where if you come dressed like a cow you get your meal for free. I first heard about this last year when I was watching the boys, so I dressed them up and took them. They thought it was pretty much the coolest thing in the world!

Outside Chick-fil-A before last year's cow day. Getting them to pose for a picture was a challenge haha

Because cow day was such a hit last year, of course I had to take them back this year. Every day this week Tate has been asking "is it cow day yet?!? When is it going to be cow day??" Apparently when he woke up this morning he opened the door to his room and yelled "IT'S COW DAY!!!" and ran down the stairs screaming. haha. I had to put the costumes together again, but it's pretty much the same thing as last year. I totally love this picture of the three of them! What sweet boys! :)

Picture taken before leaving for cow day today. They are getting so big!

Cow day works out to be a pretty sweet deal for the kids. They get a free kids meal, and if you don't want your toy at Chick-fil-A, you can trade it in for a free ice cream cone. Free food and free dessert. Can't go wrong there!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

I saw this idea on a baking blog I read a few weeks ago and just knew I had to try it for our 4th of July Party!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes!

I decided the presentation was the most important part of these, and since I was already doing a TON of cooking for the party I made it easy on myself and just used a store bought cake mix and store bought frosting.

For something that looks like such a simple idea, these were pretty tricky to pull off. First I dipped each cone in chocolate and added sprinkles. You could skip this step, but I think it really adds to the whole looks. After the cones were dry I popped a chocolate cupcake into each waffle cone. Now comes the trick part. First you have to use a knife to spread frosting over the edges of the cupcake showing outside the cone. Then using a piping bag (and the right consistency of frosting, which is more difficult than one might think) pipe on the frosting to make it look like soft serve ice cream. Finally add some sprinkles to the top. So cute!

I'm really happy with how these turned out. They really do look just like real ice cream cones! Hope everyone loves them as much as I do :)

Homemade Pizza

I have been wanting to make homemade pizza for awhile now, but was too scared to try it due to the fact I have never made any type of homemade bread before so I had no idea if I could do it or not. Through a cooking/baking blog I read, I found a recipe for a simple crust that was supposed to be amazing. I found a simple sauce recipe from the same blog, so I decided to give it a try last Friday when I had the whole day free to mess with it.

I am happy to report my pizza turned out fantastic!! I absolutely LOVED it, and Tony compared it to pizza from New York Pizzaria. The dough was light and airy with a great homemade bread taste, and sauce was light with just the right mix of seasoning and tomato. Both recipes made enough for 2 pizzas so I actually made both this time so we could have cold pizza the next day. However, this is good to know because the dough is easy to make and freeze. I'll probably start keeping a batch in the freezer so I can throw together a pizza at a moments notice when needed.

I wish I had taken more pictures while I was making this, or even some good ones after I was done, but since it was my first time making pizza it took awhile to figure out the tricks like how to transfer the dough to the pizza stone haha. By the time they were ready we were starving so I snapped a few quick pics and we gobbled it up. yum yum yum!

In case you are interested in trying it, The crust recipe can be found here: Annie's Eats Perfect Pizza Crust, and I used the sauce recipe found here: Annie's Eats Pizza Sauce

Tate's 3 month photo shoot!

Today I got the privilege of taking baby Tate's 3 month pictures! This sweet baby belongs to my teammate, and friend, Courtney. She wanted to do something for her husband for his first father's day, so she asked me if I could come take some pictures of Tate while he was out of town. Of course I said yes! I had so much fun taking pictures of this sweet boy this morning. He is such a cutie, so it wasn't too hard to get in a few good shots. This must be the happiest baby I have ever seen. He never fusses, and keeps himself entertained just laying around. Thanks Courtney for sharing your sweet little one with me today!

Here are a few of my favorites from our photo shoot:

So hard to choose just a few! Check out the album on my facebook to see all the rest of his adorableness! :)

Kitten yawn

I was taking pictures of my kitten the other night when I snapped one mid yawn. When I pulled back the camera to look at the shot on the screen I burst out laughing. How scary does she look?!?! haha yikes!

Lake Houston Park Backpacking

Friday I was having a bad morning at work when I sat down at my computer and saw I had a message from Tony on g chat saying he had booked a site at Lake Houston Park for the weekend. Totally boosted my mood and helped me make it through the rest of the day with my crazy kids!

This place we found was PERFECT for us! It's for backpack camping, and there are only two of the sites there so you're really in the middle of nowhere. We got there Friday evening, loaded up with our packs, and started the 2 mile trek to our site. Unfortunately, we were a little late leaving town so we didn't quite make it to the site before sundown. There was about a mile of that hike where it was getting pretty dark and hard to see on this tiny trail in the middle of the forest, but we made it haha. We set up camp, found some firewood, made a fire, and hung out a bit before calling it a night.

Saturday morning we got up, ate some breakfast, then headed out to try our luck with some fishing. No such luck, so after a bit we gave up and went back to camp.

We loaded up our day pack and went for a hike.

We hiked through these awesome trails in the middle of the woods for 4 miles until we got to Lake Isabel where we stopped and made lunch.

After a little rest, we finished our loop by treking the 2.5 miles back to camp. We gathered up a bunch of firewood, Tony started a fire, we cooked dinner, and hung out the rest of the night.

This morning we got up, packed up camp, and backpacked the 2 miles back to the car. I must say, after all the weekend hiking and sleeping on the ground, the hike back was rough. My legs were so tired and my pack felt SO heavy!

On the way back to the car we ran across two copperhead snakes sitting in the middle of the trail. I was scared, but Tony used a stick and got them to move out of the way so we could cross the path. um, yikes!

This was perfect for learning how to backpack camp though. 2 miles is not that much (though with a huge pack on your back it feels a lot longer haha) but it's far enough away that there are no people around so you really feel like you are out in the middle of nowhere.

What a fun, relaxing weekend! :)