Unplugged Sundays

What I miss most about the school year is making time on a regular basis for our family to be together for the day doing something outdoors.  It feels so good to be out there.  My mind is clear, my soul soars and I can breathe, deeply, evenly, just breathe.

I want this for beyond the summer.  But how do we hang onto this?   The weekends are so short during the school year and are filled up with just as many important activities, get togethers and daily chores.  I imagine it takes a really strong committment...an iron clad one.  It would have to be written in

stone  or for us, the family calendar. What could we committ to? Ideally Sundays would be nice but could we do every Sunday? Might need to start smaller, perhaps 2 Sundays a month?  I need to think this through some more, back to this hike.

Today was a lovely summer day. We hit Russian Ridge for a morning hike.  The kids did well.  They have endless energy but sometimes on long hikes, esp my littlest, encouragement is needed.  They carried their own backpacks, with hat, water bottle and snack. We stop often, to look at treasures found too, which helps.

This preserve offers many smaller loops that are doable for younger children.  My favorite here is touring the pond and watching for frogs or bunnies in the grasses.  We decided to take another trail today that lead us away from the pond.  It was a little warmer out in the open then we were used to, but I'm happy to say my kids did great.  There were lots of finds along the way, banana slugs in the forest, lizards on the hot rocks, ground squirrels, all kinds of bugs, esp. ticks.  Many checks after our hike.  Boys especially love finding the perfect stick.  Bubba could carry back an armload if we let him as there are so many sticks he falls in love with.  There are sticks for walking, sticks that make good tools and of course, sticks that make good swords. 

It was pretty brown on our hike and we looked forward to small spots of color. This was such a happy splash of sunshine on our walk. The kids are naturally drawn to them, the state flower in California...the poppy

Big daddy on our last hike mentioned he would really like to see a snake in person. Now, I'm happy he has really gotten into our hikes and has things he wants to discover too, but I must admit I froze a bit when he threw that lovely wish out to the Universe.  Be careful what you wish for, the Universe does have a way of granting said wishes.  We naturally spotted a snake on our last hike and on this hike the little fellow below gave us quite a fright as we almost sat down on him during our snack time. There was a bend in the road with a lovely bit of shade from a lone tree. Well this guy was enjoying the shade as well and came right on out to greet us.  Amazingly, we all jumped up quite fast and moved down a ways.  Always important to look around

closely before sitting down. 

My favorite moment on this hike was Boy Wonder offering his hand to Busy Girl when she felt she was too tired to go on.

After our hike we had good intentions of heading down the road to Alice's.  There aren't many restaurants in the area but even still, this can be a fun spot with good food.  It's at the corner ot two country hwys and it's fun to people watch here. Very diverse and interesting crowd can be found here.  From mountain bike riders to motorcycles riders to sports car drivers.  It's very popular though, and the service can be a bit unhand holding when it's busy.  Unfortunately, it was too busy today and we grudgingly moved on.  We continued on Hwy 9 for quite a while and eventually found ourselves down in Felton.

I have a lot of fond memories of Felton from my childhood.  We used to camp here every summer with friends.  I'm always happy to return and look around. 

We eventually ate and walked over to the park with the historic covered bridge.  The park included a playground and it was nice to run and climb and burn off the energy gained from lunch.

Here is Felton's historic Covered Bridge.  Through it's only used for pedestrians now,  it's still considered to be the tallest covered bridge in the country.   Now that's pretty cool!                                                               The kids were pretty much beat after this. We piled back in the car and Big Daddy and I had a very enjoyable and hand holding drive back home.  The three littles were all passed out in the back. Now that is my kind of unplugged Sunday. 

Three things I'm Grateful For:

1) A free Sunday

 2) A little hand holding

3) Chocolate covered donuts on the ride home

Riding the Rails

I'm a sucker for trying new things...new experiences.  When you have young children, everyday life is often ruled by the clock and by routines.  So for my sanity, I mean for my enjoyment, I'm constantly dreaming up new things for us to see or do.  My dearest hubby thinks it must be taxing for me to always be thinking of what's next to do, waiting until we can go and then once done, it's over.  I don't think this way at all.  It just gives me something to look forward to. What's wrong with a little something to look forward to in the midst of our everyday list of chores?  I can only find so much happiness in picking up and putting away after my darling family for so many hours a day.  And the trips don't have to be big places, even small trips never taken before gives me a thrill.  Today's such adventure was just that.  An hour's train ride up north, hop off for a yummy breakfast, investigate the surrounding area by foot and hit a park in the area. 

Today's adventure stop...the cute downtown area of Burlingame.  I feel you all laughing at me.  That's okay...Burlingame was new for us and a doable adventure for a Sunday.  Most importantly, the kids had a blast.  The excitement of wearing their backpacks loaded with sunhat, journal, bottle of water, and snack for this little journey was happiness enough.  Trying to buy our tickets, find out which track to head out to and what train number was ours was a fun family learning experience all worth it when we climbed aboard and found our seats.  It was fun to play games, draw and cuddle as we watched the neighboring cities pass by our windows.  Once at our destination we headed down the main street with all the cute boutique shops and restaurants until we came upon the Coppenhagen Bakery.  It was very busy but we managed to squeeze in and found a table.  We were so hungry that we devoured breakfast.  It was all delicious but the new favorite was definitely banana pancakes..yum!  After breakfast we hit the local farmer's market for some yummy grapes and dried nectarines and then headed off to the park to play.  The park was a great find and the kids had a blast trying out a new playground.  Boy wonder brought a soccer ball and had fun kicking it around with dad.  When we were sufficiently tired we headed back to the train station and caught the next train back home.  Overall it was an easy and doable outing and I saw lots of other cute little downtowns in other cities that I mentally filed away for another day.

 My oldest lost his tooth while on the train.  Here he is so proud showing off his missing tooth.

 Hitting the playground hard and stuffing face at Coppenhagen Bakery.  Aah...the Sunday life!

Waiting at the station to catch the train back home.

Busy girl singing to her daddy on the train home.

3 things I'm grateful for:

1. Having a free day for fulfilling fun adventures

2. Having a family willing to try my crazy ideas

3. Wearing the kids out so we could crash on the couch once home