The end is in sight

Second to last day of the shooting season. Not many in the bag as the remaining pheasants have become very gun wise!
Beautiful day ending with a beautiful sunset

Snow dusting.

Whilst the rest of the UK has been having a fairly decent amount of snow (decent by our standards. My Americans, don't laugh!), here in the West Midlands we have had hardly anything!! I'm really not happy. All we've had are the abnormally freezing cold temperatures and a cold house. Yay.

This morning we did wake up to a light dusting of snow (still not too happy with that). I took the pup for a walk at the canal. It was really beautiful, with the water frozen over, and the canal boats seemingly trapped in the ice.

Here are some pics.

Ducks on the frozen water

Skye

Locks

Frozen water

Photography.

Was fooling around with a photography site builder thingy.

This is what I came up with:

www.wix.com/amytrollope/simplicityphotography

Coffee

Dylan's away, so went for coffee with mom and dad. Went shopping, bought some jeans. Good morning.

More snow pics. Nice heavy snowfall

Dylan & me

Skye & Dylan. She was trying to eat the snowball from his hands

Dylan & Dad, snowball fight

Skye trying to catch snowballs

Dad & Mom having a snowball fight

The playground

Mom & me

Skye in the snow

The field

The church

Our street

New Year's Day walk in the Clent Hills

To the far right of this pic you can see how icy the path was

The above are a few pics of when we went walking in the Clent Hills on New Year's day. It was a great day out. We took puppydog with us, who was such a brilliant little star. There were lots of people and dogs around, but I let her off the lead and she was as good as gold. She made me feel so proud of her!

The Clent Hills are really beautiful. The day was made better by the fact that there was blue sky and sunshine. Yes, it was a weak, winter sunshine, and it was freezing cold (I think it was about -1), but it was good. Oh, and did I mention the treacherous iced paths and hills we had to face? Yep that's right. The paths and hills were completely, dangerously iced over. There was also snow everywhere. It was so beautiful though. And fun, when we weren't falling over or negotiating inches of ice and compacted snow!

We tried sticking to a map and directions, which didn't go too well at first. We ended up doubling back on ourselves a bit, until we eventually got onto the right path. We finished the walk by walking through a woodland (Skye was in her element!) and we were on our own so it was peaceful and quiet, and then we crossed this bridge and began a fairly steep ascent to the top of the woodland ridge.

When we reached the top of the ridge there was a family who wanted to say to Skye, so she put on her best behaviour and happily obliged them.

We then headed back to the car on this really, really icy path; and once back at the car had hot chocolate and laughed at people trying not to fall over (it's quite entertaining if you're not the one falling!), and Skye put her head on my lap and slept the whole way home.

Good day :-)

Photo shoot with Angela

These photos were taken by Angela the week of our DTS debrief, just a couple of days before we graduated. I said I wanted some pics from her, so she agreed and we went off to have a photo shoot. I know they were taken ages ago, but I thought I would just post them to my blog. Ang spent hours editing these pics, so thanks girl!

These three pics are great. The first one, in the background you can see some figures. They were a bunch of schoolboys who appeared to be fascinated with what we were doing and watched us as they walked down the street. The third one is my favourite. I just love the colours, and the way she has taken the pic. It is awesome :-)

This pic of me on the swing was a pretty fun pic to take. Angela and I were walking along some of the back roads in Maz near the base, and she saw this swing hanging from the tree (we'd often watched a little boy swing on it) and she was like 'that would make a great pic, quick go swing on it!' I was a bit more hesitant, but agreed to go swing on it. So while I was swinging and she was snapping away with her camera, we were both on the lookout for anyone who was going to yell at us. We both walked away cracking up with laughter.

These two pics I adore. I just love the colours, and how Angela took them. When we went up the stairs to this place to take the pics, we had this old lady come over and start questioning us, about what we were doing. Angela explained to her, and she carried on glaring suspiciously at us for a while, before eventually walking off and leaving us. Despite her, the pics turned out great :-)

To take this pic we went on a hilarious journey. We both decided that we wanted a picture of me jumping up with the city in the background, and Angela decided that we needed a roof for it. So off we went trying to find the perfect roof. Eventually we found this roof and climbed up to it (the house looked empty. We weren't just jumping on some person's roof). When we started taking the pics (well, Angela started taking the pics. I started jumping!), this man came over and started asking us questions. We found out that it wasn't his house (so not sure why exactly he was questioning us). If I remember rightly, I think he was a fisherman (???). He then started asking us loads of other questions and talking to us, and then he called his friends over, and they sat watching us!!! It was really creepy! As soon as we were done, Angela and I bolted in the other direction! Once we were safely far away we started to see the funny side, and it has provided us with a great memory, haha!

This pic was taken when Angela and I went to visit The Browns' house so we could see their beagle pups. Like the true photographer that she is, Angela immediately noticed the light coming from the land lady's window upstairs, and asked if we could take some pictures. One of the puppies insisted on being in the pic with me, as did Amelia Brown. That little girl holds a very special place in my heart, and I miss her tons. I love this pic.

This pic came about because Angela knows how much I love the old VW bugs that are crawling everywhere in the city. So she made me sit on this one so she could get a pic.