#tbt A Walk To Remember*

Earlier this year, we started encouraging the kids to walk a lot. We have The Chariot, and both kids can still fit in it, but it's getting a little heavy to push and it's too big to take on road trips. Rachel has always been a good walker (she's got good stamina and doesn't complain (much!)), but Sam needed a little extra motivation. Thankfully, the Fitbit we got him for his birthday seems to have provided the extra encouragement he needed.

For my birthday, I wanted to walk up the CN Tower but sadly, the climb we were going to do happened to fall the Saturday after Sam's surgery and we didn't want to leave him. So instead I told Dave, "Let's follow the trails in our city and walk to the mall." It was a 12 kilometre (7.5 mile) round trip.

Now lest the photos deceive you, we did have the Chariot with us, and Rachel tripped about forty-five minutes into our two hour walk and rode in the Chariot much of the way. Sam got a little further, but understandably, both kids were pretty tired.

My favourite part of the whole excursion was that, even though we were in the middle of our city, we felt like we were in the country. Most of the time you couldn't hear traffic and we walked along a creek for much of the way. It was so beautiful.

We were definitely ready for lunch when we got to the mall!

And we got to see the actual van from Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. That was pretty cool.

And then we were on our way home again. We had fun walking under the highway.

It was also fun to try and find baby ducklings.

Like I said, it was hard to remember we were in the middle of the city! And we even got to see our provincial flower, the trillium, in bloom. It was definitely a walk to remember.

*I know Throwback Tuesday doesn't have quite the same ring, but I really wanted to post this today!

October Goals

Since we're currently on a road trip, and I have some time to do some blogging, I thought I'd post my goals for the month of October. Earlier this week we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and it makes a lot of sense to me that the new year begins in the fall. Especially with the start of school, it just feels like a good time to get into new routines.

So with all that preamble, I have been thinking of some things I want to accomplish this month, even though we're a week into it already. Ha!

1) I want to organize, and clean, our basement. I have to admit, this one is a bit of cheat goal. My friend Karen and I have traded housecleaning days this fall. I helped her wash a lot of windows. She's going to get to help me vacuum the cobwebs out of our basement. Yay?!

2) Drink more water. As I write this post I'm drinking a coffee-hot chocolate so I've got a bit of work to do on this one. Ha! I've said before this is a challenge for me so I really want to work on this. I think I'd feel better in general if I had a higher water intake.

3) Blog two times a week. And I'm already falling down on this one :) As I said last week, my friend Emily inspired me to set "manageable goals" and I feel like this one should be manageable. So look for more blog content coming your way.

4) Get the pictures printed for Rachel's map. My blog friend, Bekah, directed me to this site through one of her "Saturday Six" posts. I thought it was a good companion to Sam's magnetic map and convinced Dave we needed to order it for Rachel. We also found someone who would do a Canadian map for us. So now we need to print some pictures which aren't the regular 4x6 size. I can't wait to show you a picture when it's all done.

5) Find a good work/life routine. Right now, I'm struggling to make the work hours happen. It's only 10-15 hours a week so that should leave lots of time for the rest of life. I need to determine my working hours and stick to them. One of the nice things about going into an office, is it helps define "work time." That's been more of a challenge for me in working from home.

6) Create new kitchen art. I've had an idea in mind for two years! It's time to make some progress on it. The funny thing is that I have all the supplies and think I could do this project in about two hours so it's just a matter of finding making the time.

7) Get more sleep. I am sleep deprived and need to go to bed earlier. Life will be easier if I get more sleep. I'm setting a goal of being in bed by 10, and asleep by 11. I could take the easy way out and make this a "three times a week" thing but I'm going to challenge myself and go for every night. Except maybe Fridays and, once in awhile, Saturdays. Ha!

8) Order our holiday cards. Last year, okay, this year, we were sending out our cards in January. Some of you may remember that! We have family pictures scheduled for next Saturday so that should give us plenty of time to get cards out in a timely fashion.

Family photos 2015

So those are my October goals. I'll check in sometime the first week of November and let you know how I did.