Totally Smitten Mama: Wednesday Afternoons

Whenever I'm given the chance to create a new tradition for our family, I'm usually pretty quick to go for it. Lena might make a mild suggestion such as, "why don't we go out for breakfast on Sunday?" (there's the best café at the end of our new street), and I'll immediately offer up, "hey, why don't we go out for breakfast every Sunday? It'll be like what we do on Sunday mornings!" It's part of the reason why I've been so drawn towards celebrating the Pagan holidays . . . I think I was probably meant to be born into a more religious family with more built-in traditions. As is, I've done pretty well with just making them up as I go.

Our newest family tradition was inspired by the fact that Luke and Jaz have a half-day on Wednesdays (this is true for all grade levels at their new school). I pick them up before lunch, and then we have hours and hours of unstructured time before dinner. What do we do with this time? Well, yesterday we came up with the new tradition of having a special lunch (either going out for lunch or having a picnic somewhere), and then going for a hike. I'm guessing we may have to modify this tradition somewhat to allow for a change in weather or season (i.e. perhaps there will be a "Sunny and/or warm Wednesday Afternoon Tradition" and a "Rainy and/or cold Wednesday Afternoon Tradition"), but for now we will optimistically plan to spend our Wednesday afternoons climbing mountains.

Yesterday we inaugurated the new tradition by eating out at our very favorite restaurant, and then doing one of our very favorite local hikes: climbing up "Bare Mountain" (Luke and Jaz always spend at least 5 minutes discussing the fact that Bare Mountain is named for the fact that "it's, like, bare naked at the top, not because there are bears on it!"). It's a very kid-friendly hike because it's not too long (it takes about 20-30 minutes to get to the top), the trail is fairly steep and requires a bit of scrambling (which the kids love), and the view from the top is pretty great (especially once the leaves start to change). It had been several months since we'd done this particular hike (it's too hot in the summer), and I was surprised by how quickly Jasper and Lukas made their way to the summit. They left me and Mr. DoItMyself! in the dust. Which is not to say that I wasn't equally impressed by our not-quite-two-year-old who managed to climb up the second half of the mountain mostly without assistance. And the kids were just as pleased with themselves as I was with them.