A Walk In The Woods, With Children

Yesterday we went on a family hike to a state park near our home. We stopped at a deli and bought sandwiches and snacks to have a picnic there also. All except my 9yr old son, who complained and cried that he doesn't like deli sandwiches (?!?!) and would only have one from Subway. And in sticking with our parenting technique of raising completely self-absorbed and spoiled rotten children, we stopped at Subway and bought him an overpriced sub.

And yet this child will still complain that he is somehow short changed. I think in life there are people who see the glass half full, people who see the glass half empty, and people who are constantly complaining that not only is their glass half empty, it is smaller than everyone elses glass, and who the heck took the other half that was rightfully theirs and when they are caught they had better be punished....severely. Guess which one my eldest son is ;-)

Anyway, I digress.

After we ate our lunches and played in the small stream, we went for a "walk". We decided to take a different trail thinking that it would loop us back in the direction from which we had begun. Well, after several miles that didn't happen and we were walking further and further in the wrong direction.

We tried walking off the trail in the right direction in hopes that we would meet up with a trail heading in the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately the vegitation was too thick and since we had left our machete at home, we had no choice but to turn around on the trail and backtrack. It was up hill the entire way back, or at least felt that way. And at this point our leisurely walk began to feel like a forced death march.

But the amazing thing about children is that no matter how much they complain or how tired they are they always have a reserve of energy. They can't step over fallen logs or go around them....they need to vault over them. A low hanging branch just calls out for them to swing from it or hang upside down. And they have to get to the top of any large rock in the vicinity.

At one point we came across the foundation remains of a building. It looked like a tall stone wall. My 3 yr old, who had just been whining about his tired legs, took one look at it, stopped dead in his tracks and yelled, "I HAVE to climb that!"

Eventually we made it back to the area wheree we had parked our van. The children ran around some more and caught more frogs in the stream, bringing them home to join our ever growing frog population.

Rob and I were exhausted that night and expected...no, hoped....no, dared to dream that the children would be exhausted also and go to sleep early. But no, they drew upon their vast energy reserves and stayed up just as late as usual.

And of course there was no sleeping in late either.