pics from last year?!

Cookie Break

We went to PEI this weekend for my nephew, Carlin's birthday party.  It was wonderful to celebrate his 3rd birthday at the CARI pool with friends and family.  Particularly wonderful because his family just moved back to PEI from Calgary, AB less than a year ago, and you realise how important family relations are when they are gone.  I have so many wonderful cousin memories from being a kid, and love that we're able to make sure the kids have some of those types of experiences, too.  

On the way to PEI, I was thinking about a family friend (Howie) that I hadn't seen in forever.  He lived in the same community as mine when I was a child, and is a close friend of my dad's.  I decided I wanted to be sure to see him this weekend.  He has recently sold and moved out of his old family home, and now has a new home nestled in the woods in the same community.  He also has a tiny one room cabin, further into the woods.  I figured that would make a nice little walk on a Sunday afternoon.  

When we arrived at the house, Howie welcomed us to his property.  He said there were lots of trails that would take us to the cabin, and that surely we would find it with a little exploring.  And this might have been true if we had not added to our little family hike on this day.   My boys really wanted their little 3 year old cousin to come with us.   Carlin did absolutely wonderful!! It is no small feat to walk on winter trails, and/or to try to keep up to Liam! At times, I carried Carlin on my back, and on my shoulder at times, and so did Al (as we did with our boys when they were younger).  Overall though, Carlin did lots of his own walking.  And even for the adults ,it was a little difficult to keep going with the trails going in all directions, and not knowing if you were heading in the right direction.  Eventually, we decided it was time for a cookie break - sitting in the snow in the sunshine.  The boys were so adorable and sweet with their gingerbread cookies, provided by granny.  Again, I'm ecstatic to provide this memory for the boys.  Then Howie showed up on his x-country skis to show us the way to cabin, but the little monkeys were only thinking about having some hot chocolate back at Howie's house (which had been promised earlier).  I walked back with the boys to Howie's, while Howie had Al trampling through the snow all over the property.  Al was able to take some pics and a video of the cabin for me.  I definitely want to come back to do some more exploring on his property.  So simple, beautiful and peaceful (when you couldn't hear the snowmobiles). 

Meanwhile, back at the house, I let myself and the kiddos in.  Actually, because Zachary was dragging his feet a little, it was my nephew who let himself in first :)  But we all got our boots and jackets and mittens and hats off, then made ourselves at home in the kitchen.  I gave the kids each a piece of paper from a notepad and a pen to occupy them, then went about opening cupboards until I found the hot chocolate.  The boys each had their own cup done pretty much by the time Howie and Al got back. 

I had never been in this house before, and I hadn't seen Howie in a really long time, but it still seemed like the most natural thing in the world.  I love relationships like that.  I think I should make a new motto in my life, "If I'm not comfortable rooting through your cupboards (or vice versa), then perhaps we shouldn't be friends at all". ... a little too extreme?! Well, for those who do have those wonderful relationships, I'm sure you know what I mean about how special that is.

Once again, it was lovely to get out on a trail.  Short but sweet.  And I can barely remember how it seemed like it might be impossible to get all three of them in their hat, mittens, snowpants, and winter jackets.  

Before we knew it, it was time to head off for another amazing family memory making experience at my aunt and uncle's place in Seaview (and the hot tub!!!)

Spider Lake Trail and Geocaching

Congratulations to our family! We got out the door again!! It sure didn't look like it was going to happen today.  I spent the morning thinking about how I really did not want to go outside today.  It was simple too cold, and it wasn't worth it.  I put another sweater on and starting baking.  (yes, I'm proud of my Almond Cookies, http://thejoyofcleaneating.com/recipes/almond-flour-cookies).  The boys worked in the dungeon (aka our unfinished basement).  The afternoon started to disappear.  We had a ton of rain last night, then it turned cold so everything was icy.  But I did notice the steep street by our place had been salted...so we could actually go somewhere.  And, I remembered the special place I had found on Thursday on a trail run, and figured the boys would enjoy putting a geocache there.  All of a sudden, there was motivation to get out of the house on this cold winter day. It was only -6 today (feels like -13 in the wind).  I packed up some snacks, we all bundled up, and Al salted our steep driveway.  It was sometime after 3pm when we started our little hike at the Spider Lake Trails.  It was very icy.  It's not an overly pretty start with ATV tracks and clearcutting and power lines. Then we hit a spot where we had to cross a little stream.  It didn't seem possible, and I certainly didn't want anyone with wet feet.  We backtracked a bit and found another trail that seemed to reasonably take us around.  We did have another water crossing on this trail too, but at least there was a tree that we could manoeuvre across on.  The trail meandered a lot more than I expected and I did get surprisingly confused when we met up again with the original wider trail.  It wasn't long before we were on another smaller fun trail.  I had told the boys we were looking for an abandoned old car alongside the trail. It took much longer to get to it than I thought.  I had done the trail from the other direction, mostly downhill - (not that it is very steep in this area, just a little bit more effort for those smaller legs), and I had been trail running it myself.  We did eventually get to it, and hid the geocache that Zachary had been carrying.  It was also a nice spot to have a snack of juice and cookies! Liam had also been carrying a geocache that he wanted to hide.  Hubby and Liam took off back down the trail to find a spot.  Zach wanted to be able to keep up with them, and I bet he'll make a big effort this summer with the big jacket and boots off.  We found them as they were hiding Liam's geocache in a tree - winter friendly cache.  Both boys had bright red cheeks and lots of energy as we headed down the path again.  It was very icy on the main trail when we reached it, but the side trails were decent. We decided to risk taking the faster way back to the car as it was getting close to supper time, and therefore, had to face the water crossing that we deemed too tricky on the way in.   We had to move out of the way of a couple of ATV'ers that we coming by right at the water crossing.  They broke through the ice and made the crossing a little trickier, but still do-able.  The boys were impressed by the ATVs, which always scares me a little bit (as obviously being a bit of a fanatic about hiking, I dearly hope the boys having been exposed to so much outdoors will look for quieter ways to enjoy it when they are older).  Hubby went across the stream first, then Liam jumped to him.  I managed to throw Zach to Hubby, then I made the crossing on my own in a slightly different spot that didn't seem all that difficult.  No wet feet.  YAY!! and a short walk/ skate to the car. 

It ended up being another wonderful family day hike. I'm still not exactly sure how we did it.  Still, I manage to find some guilt when everything does turn out, and we hadn't invited another family (or families) to join us.  It is a challenge to deal with the child behavioral issues, logistics of a new trail or trail conditions, your gear, and the weather.  And to top it off, we're usually pulling it off as a last minute decision (along with parental communication issues that are never my fault :).  So it is perhaps reasonable and less stressful to do it on our own...at least sometimes.  

Somehow, though, it is my dream to help more kids (families) get on the trails - leading by example and invitations to join us...and one day, being comfortable doing that in all seasons.  

Susie's Lake

I am glad to have done this hike today.  I mean to say I'm glad it's done and over.  It's one I heard about a long time ago, and talked about doing it a few times.  This morning, the kids got up and dressed quickly, and hubby was keen to go.  We planned to be on the trail by 10:30am.  I even emailed friends to say so, in case they wanted to meet us.  We scurried around getting supplies ready and making sure we had even warm clothing for everyone.  Then I took some things to the car, and got cold.  Cold feet. Really, I had to go warm them up by the fire, and I mentioned to hubby that maybe it was too cold.  Then I don't know what happened....he said he thought it would be fine, and I got frustrated that he didn't hear what I said.  I mean really hear me, and my worries about the temperature.  We do lots of stuff with the kids that lots of folks wouldn't consider, but generally, I feel we're pretty careful.  The temperature was -11, with a windchill of -17, so I wanted to be 100% sure we were fully prepared.  Hubby might have been fine to just deal with whatever came our way, whereas I wanted avoid any problems whatsoever - and since that's not even remotely possible, he got frustrated with me.  So anyway, this blog is not about communication problems.  I just thought it would be nice to share how difficult it can be to get out the door -even the odd time that the kids are being cooperative.  So I had a nice warm bath, and then we made up & decided we could, in fact, just go after lunch (which is our more normal time to go for a family hike anyway).  Food in the belly and we were on our way to Susie's Lake (start point behind Kent Building supplies in Bayers Lake). 

It was very cold in the parking lot.

It's not so easy, but not that hard either, to find the start of this trail.  We ended up taking a little longer at the start by parking by the other stores, right beside Kent, instead of parking to the forest side of Kent.  It eventually became obvious as to where the trail was going, and we could see where we could have started.  There is no signage there either though.

We kept a nice little pace - by necessity.  Did I mention it was cold? As it turned out, everyone but me seemed to be dressed warmly.  My base layer was polyester which should have been okay, but I think it just gave me a chill.  I wish I had worn my favorite warm weather layer of light merino wool.  Zach slowed his pace down...he was dressed warmly.  I just got more of a chill that I couldn't get rid of. 

Hubby and the kids did a little geocaching.  We saw the frozen lake with a man and dog walking right across it.  Thank goodness, they stayed on top.  It was really cold but I wasn't sure enough of the ice condition to let the kids play on it.  We headed back up the trail to the turn off to hike a little bit around the lake, but stopped for a snack.  We had homemade granola bars.  I've been making a ton of homemade granola bars - experimenting with the recipes but they mostly seem to be a hit everytime.  Yummy.  It was at this point that I put my third layer of pants on, but I was still chilled.  We went 100 m up the trail to a geocache, then I told hubby that I had to turn around.  I just wasn't feeling safe being this chilled.  We got Liam to chase me to help me warm up.  We had one small, very small stream to cross over, which we had already gone over, which I had already warned Liam to keep his feet out of the water.  He did have boots on, but they were the kind that could still get wet.  I turned back to see him put his foot on a big piece of ice that was in the little stream, and his foot went through the ice and into the water.  I was frustrated and worried.  And I told him, this is exactly how kids drown.  Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have said that.  It is sort of true...just not in a little tiny stream.  We weren't all that far away from the car, but I was scared of his poor little toes getting frozen stiff.  He kept reassuring me that he was fine, and I kept telling him to keep running to make sure that his feet wouldn't freeze.  We did have extra socks but not extra footwear.  I assumed his socks had to be wet as the outside of his boots were very wet, but I didn't want to take them off to inspect because it was so cold.  I assumed if he kept running, his feet would stay warm enough.  As it turns out, when checked back at the car, his socks were dry - so either they dried from his feet sweating, or they never got wet in the first place.  So perhaps, I could have handled the whole situation with a lot more chill (as in relaxed mode) but someone has to do the worrying :) 

The best thing is we did get out for our family day hike.  It's done. We survived.  We all want to go back... sometime, perhaps in another season. 

Lots of hiking pics