Hiking and Exloring

The month of June and end of May seemed to be filled with lots of hiking and exploring once the trails opened up again. I love finding easy trails the kids can do on my Alltrails App. The first one we did with Lena (and tried our best to social distance) was the Diamond T Loop. It might not have been the prettiest, but it was nice and close, and had a creek and still a decent view. We went the wrong way for a little bit of it, and then turned around when we realized, so overall it was about 5km. There was lots of snow still on the trail! We spotted a moose when we drove up, which was super cool! My mom decided it was okay to watch Leo for me once in a while...we were still kind of social distancing from them, but things started to relax a little bit. It was nice to enjoy the time with just Bentley and Deacon!

 We did Heart Creek trail with my parents one day, and Jeff let me leave Leo at home with him (since he was still working from home). Leo's at kind of a hard age for hiking since he wants to walk but is too slow, and doesn't really like getting carried in the backpack. It was a beautiful trail, probably one of my favorites! While the ending isn't amazing, all along the way you see the river and it has so many fun little bridges to go over. Bentley had fun being the leader and Deacon had fun finding rocks and sticks "to fight the bears with mom." It was also pretty fun watching Deacon go so slow over each bridge at the beginning, and then on the way back running over them and saying "my favorite!" The kids also brought their bug house and caught a butterfly! We threw rocks in the water, made inukshuks, ate lunch and had a great day. Oh also, I had an eye infection (luckily I had my dad able to check that for me and get a prescription), so that's why I was stuck wearing my glasses!

One Sunday Jeff and I decided to do the Big Hill Springs Trail after church at home. It's about 50 minutes away from our house I think, and is just a short little trail. We brought the backpack to carry Leo in but he refused and ended up walking and running the whole way. He actually did great and kept up with Bentley and Deacon! It's a beautiful little trail with a waterfall at the end and lots of places to play. We stayed there for a while just enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful scenery!

 We did the Grassi Lakes hike with Breanne Gallup and her kids one day, and it was gorgeous at the top! We took the easy way up because we had kids and they took their time but did great, and then the views and lakes at the top were awesome. It was quite windy, so we didn't stay as long as we would've liked, but it was well worth the trip out! The kids collected sticks, Bentley snapped photos with her little camera, and we ran down the mountain on the way out. Leo was with my parents, which made it quite relaxing!

 We explored Elbow Falls one day with my parents and ate lunch with them. The kids liked the waterfall even more than I thought they would! I had never brought them there before, so it was a good time! They also had lots of fun throwing rocks in the river, especially Leo, who did not want to leave when it was time to go. 

 The Forgetmenot Pond is another place we've been enjoying. We went with Lena and the kids rode their bikes around the pond and then played by the river with the rocks and sand for hours. It was so beautiful all around and we really loved it there!

 Another hike we did right at the beginning of July was the Fullerton Loop. We went with my parents and the Loewens, which made it really fun! I started carrying Leo in the backpack for the first bit (which was a miracle he would go in!) and then Mason volunteered to carry him and didn't want to stop, so I said I'll take it! This was the longest hike I've done with my kids, being 7km, and I was pretty amazed at how good they did. Bentley had no problem but Deacon definitely got tired towards the end. He just kept pushing on, though, with a little bit of help up the hills. The view was gorgeous and it was nice how close it was. Scarlett was pretty funny and would put Deacon on her back sometimes and one time Deacon said, "You're like a mountain goat!" It's so fun to see how well Bentley gets along with Scarlett and how great all of Tamara's kids are to mine! Afterwards we headed to the Forgetmenot Pond for a picnic and some rock throwing in the river. When we got home, I had to carry Deacon to the couch because his legs were done!!

 We went with my parents and Scarlett to Prince's Island Park one day and we brought some bread to feed the ducks (or geese). Two sets of them had just had their babies and it was so cute to watch them walk in a line. The big ones were very aggressive, though, so we made sure the kids were safe while feeding them. Then we walked around and played at the park there. It was beautiful!

A few other little adventures we've done have been playing by the river in Bragg Creek and grabbing ice cream with Scott and Kellie, walking around our pond in the rain and collecting so many worms with the Bennetts, and biking to Annie's in Fish Creek for some ice cream with the Loewen's. We've been enjoying the outdoors!!