For my birthday I wanted to go on a family hike. Not a bad idea if my birthday was sometime between April and October….but it’s not, it’s at the end of December. And sometimes in Colorado the end of December can feel like April….but not this year. We have had one of the coldest Decembers recently and my birthday weekend continued the pattern. We actually ended up going on our hike the day after my birthday because it was snowing and there was a ton of wind on my actual birthday. I’m not sure waiting a day really made that big of a difference but since our church was cancelled that day so staff could visit family for the holidays we made the best of it. Kind of. It was all of 25 degrees before the wind and the wind drove it way down into the teens. The kids were all layered up with the little ones in their fleece pjs under additional fleece shirts and pants and heavy coats. The bigger boys all had at least two layers on as well. Hats and gloves as well and we ended up using the extra ear bands I packed around everyone’s cheeks to help keep them warm. All in all we still didn’t make it too far, total trip was right at 2.5 miles. It was the chilly wind that got us….I think if we hadn’t had wind we might have pushed on farther. We stopped at the turn around point and gave everyone granola bars and that seemed to help….Caedmon went from whining and crying a good part of the way there to being the one leading the packing running back down the trail on the way home. While it may not have been as far as I wanted and part of me really wanted to make it up the ridge….I also knew it is December and they are kids and it was really really cold. It still was a great way to spend time as a family and celebrate together.
Hiking Mommy 