Hiking at Jester Park
The cat sleeping pretty much sums up our four day weekend. It was pretty darn relaxing! We got out for a bit NYE Day and started our new year with a hike through the snow, but mostly we laid low.
Roller skating was....well...interesting. Harrison and Elizabeth did great, but Max had a hard time on the skates. With his skates on, he was nearly as tall as me. He also required my help in skating and nearly pulled me over a few times! By the end of our hour of skating, Hubs and I were exhausted from holding up the 70 lbs. 7 year old and going around and around with Harrison and Elizabeth. We had hoped to go ice skating on New Year's Day, but we needed more time to recover from roller skating before we made an ice skating attempt!
After roller skating we earned a dinner out to Guru BBQ. It was amazing! We were unsure if it was kid friendly, but like we do most times, we bit the bullet and attempted it. I'm so glad we did--our waitress was AMAZING with the kids and the menu had plenty of kid options (although our's ended up with their favorite BBQ dish: ribs!). I highly recommend trying this place and going early. We went right at 5:00 and by the time we left at 6:00 it was getting busy.
Taking after her daddy with the beer menu.
After the kids went to bed, we had Matt's siblings over to play Cards Against Humanity. We had a great time until the early morning hours.
We're not used to staying up sooooo late, but somehow we managed to make it out of bed, to the grocery store, and on a hike all before 12:30 p.m. I had hoped to make it to a First Day Hike at Ledges State Park, but we didn't make it out of bed that early! So instead we headed to Jester Park and hiked a couple of the shorter trails. It was so serene and one of my favorite hikes I've ever been on. I'm grateful that my minis are still making sure I have new experiences in my life every day. We had so much fun on our "snow hike" that we didn't even notice our cold noses and finger tips. We'll definitely be taking more winter hikes from now on.
The minis were thrilled to try out some of their new hiking gear they got for Christmas.
Since we were home a good portion of the weekend, the minis got a start on our Winter Painting.
One of my favorite moments of the weekend: Harrison trying to figure out how to take a picture with my camera (on my phone). He kept putting his hand in front of the camera lens and then had a meltdown because "something is blocking it!!" I was laughing so hard. This was the one picture he managed to capture when, after 15 minutes of attempts, he finally figured out he needed to move his hand, despite me telling him this many times. I was still laughing at him when he figured this out.
My kids requested to take a selfie with me.....while I was on the toilet. Oh memories.
Sunday we celebrated my sister's birthday. At the end of her party we watched home movies from when we were younger. I wrote a bit about that experience here.
Things got a bit out of hand finishing up the Winter Painting. Totally worth it.