New Year's Hike

We started our New Year with Dutch Babies for breakfast- a tradition Austin started a couple years ago. Asher does most of the work making them, Austin cooks them in his Dutch ovens, and I do most of the cleaning up.

Afterward, we went on a hike about an hour away from our house- we got there pretty late, but I figured that would be fine since its cold, but a lot of other people had the same idea and it was pretty crowded. Luckily we were spaced out from other groups most of the way though.

This was Natalie's first hike completely on her own- she didn't even ask me to carry her any of the way except once when she fell and hurt her knee. She got over that pretty quickly though and carried on by herself.

Everyone had a lot of fun, only Leif was a little grumpy part of the way up. Once he saw the view from the top and got a snack in him he was a lot more chipper.

One of my goals for this year is to get out and hike more, so hopefully we'll get to do that.

We were really glad that Austin got to come with us on this hike, but we'll probably leave him for many of our hikes since the days he has off work are more likely to be crowded with other people. :)

 

Christmas Break Activities

The kids have enjoyed having a long break from school. I enjoy it too because it means our days are more relaxed, allowing for diverse and fun activities, but we definitely all feel the loss of structure that school gives. The kids played with their Christmas presents and played games together. They played outside with the neighbors, had a sleepover with cousins, and we did a few fun outings. 

A man who owns an R/C car store in Fort Collins invited Asher to come try out the track that he and his wife build every Thursday. He was eager to go, but I had also promised the younger kids to take them skating at a little free rink in Downtown Fort Collins, so the original plan was to stay for 30-60 minutes with Asher and Leif sharing equal time. They were having so much fun (and the younger kids were having fun out on the track helping with any of the cars that got flipped on their backs) that after almost two hours I told the boys we had to go so the other kids could go skating. Asher begged me to just leave them there and since there were other boys their age there and the owner is a nice older gentleman, I figured it would be safe for a little while.

But the kids were pretty disappointed when we got to the "ice" rink since it was actually just sheets of hard white plastic- how lame is that?!!!! Natalie was okay with it because she didn't slip at all, but Heidi was annoyed that she couldn't actually skate. At least everything was free, but had I known, I would never have wasted the time and gotten the kids all excited about it. We only stayed for a few minutes with a promise that we would go to a real indoor rink the next day.

So we went to the ice rink where Austin grew up skating on as a kid and the kids were much happier with that. It was pretty costly since Leif is the only one who has skates that still fit, but we made it worth it by staying the whole time. We needed a few breaks and the kids (especially Natalie) were exhausted by the end, but we had a lot of fun.