Day 1/30

Well, what a better day to start a new challenge than the first day of the year. A bit cliche, but, what are ya gonna do.

As I mentioned on my “about” page, creating this challenge was really about personal growth for me. Over the past couple of years, my children and I would spend hours outside every day working toward another challenge and we couldn’t even come close to hitting the end goal. I was still always proud at how many hours we got outside, but found myself trying to get every minute outdoors on the nicer days, and feeling a “why bother” attitude on the days with weather that was less desirable. With a busy family schedule, knowing we wouldn’t be able to hit the goal turned into a lack of motivation to get outside every day, even though I could see the benefits first hand.

So I decided, why not try to hit at least 30 minutes a day, for 30 days in a row and go from there. I am hoping we are able to hit many more hours on some days, but on the days where we feel lazy and down because we are snowed in for the fourth day in a row, it can be the motivation we need to get outside. And tackling 30 days at a time seemed like a much more doable challenge.

So here we are!

Today would have absolutely been a day where we stayed inside being lazy. New Years Eve was last night, it has been a crazy week of holiday celebrations, and we all needed a little recovery time. However, by about 11am the boys couldn’t stop arguing, and the baby was looking at me wondering what we were going to do next. I mentioned getting our snow pants on (we got a light dusting yesterday) and our oldest excitedly asked if we could make the drive to one of their favorite nearby parks. Yes! Let’s go!

What ensued over the next 45 minutes was chaos. The kids were dressing themselves (very slowly may I add), and I was trying to track down everything for the baby. I decided to be extra on our first day and made some hot cocoa to bring along, but in the process I broke a glass, cut my finger, and spilled.

Note to self. Save the “extra” for at least day 10.

We finally got into the car and made it to the park. That is where we learned something new. Some parks close in the winters in Minnesota. And not like, “we suggest you don’t play here for safety reasons” close, but full on fencing surrounding the park closed.

Note to self: google park ahead of leaving house next time

But not all was lost. We drove to another nearby park and the kids had a blast. We were able to get in about 22 minutes here before the 22 degree weather had them ready to head home, but not before a little hot cocoa and cheez-its. Weird combo, I know.

To get our final 8 minutes in, we took a short walk around our neighborhood with our headlamps as it got dark. One of the kid’s favorite activities in winter!

Day 1 down and school is back in session tomorrow. We will see what we end up doing when our time is more limited during the week days!