SunshineMama

Hiking in the Adirondacks

One of Davy's favorite things to do is go hiking. It doesn't matter what season it is, he loves to be up on the mountains.

Before we got married, I loved to hike, as well. Over the years, though, I've had two kids and have become very out of shape. I've also picked up some unclaimed weight that others have left behind and claimed it as my own. It's been a while since I've hiked a BIG mountain. I've done some small ones here and there, but I've stayed away from the bigger ones and let Davy hike those on his own.

Recently, I started going to Weight Watchers so that I could finally get a hold of my self-control (or lack of it.....or to get some self-control....any of those would work). I need to lose some serious weight....but I also wanted to do something that had a bigger goal attached to it. Something that would work well with the goal of losing weight. Something that would help it.

I found my goal when we went hiking on Labor Day.

Davy was originally going to go hiking by himself, but then thought it would be fun to spend the holiday as a family. He picked out a mountain that he thought we could all handle. Now......the kids can handle a heck of a lot more than I can. They're both wiry, lean and fast. They're also young. ;) Yes, yes, I know you can hike a mountain well into your upper years. In fact, we met a 70 year old man hiking down the mountain that put me WAY to shame!

Davy picked out Cascade Mountain in the high peaks region of the Adirondacks. Cascade is 4098 feet above sea level, and it's almost 2000 feet of elevation gain. It's a 4.4 mile round trip of hiking and is considered the easiest hike of the High Peaks.

We took our time and paced ourselves....though I know that Davy was just chomping at the bit to get to the top. He's actually hiked this peak a couple times before.

When you get to the top, you end up sitting on a bald summit and get a full 360 degree view of the surround High Peaks region. Absolutely breathtaking and gorgeous.

The top was super windy, so the kids and I were a little leery of standing on the top.  After a while, though, Girly ventured up to the peak with Davy.

While we were hiking to the peak, a guy was coming down with a shirt on that had a patch on it that said, "ADK 46." I asked Davy about this and he said it's a club for people that hike the 46 High Peaks of New York. Cascade is the 36th highest of the peaks.

When I got to the top of the mountain, I realized that this was what my new goal would be. It worked well with losing the weight that I want to lose. It's a healthy goal and it's attainable. And talk about a beautiful goal.....hiking the most beautiful peaks in the Adirondack Park of New York.

I figured that if I was going to nail a 4098 foot mountain and it was one of the 46 High Peaks, I might as well start right then and there. Since the kids went up with us, I'm going to include them, as well. So, I'll be sending in our letters to start off with our goal of being an Adirondack 46-R. (You can check out their website here: ADK 46-R). Davy has already hiked quite a few of the 46, but has never se nt in his log letters, so we're ALL going to start now.

On Tuesday, I put in another 2.6 miles of walking and my goal is to continue with walking long distances a few times a week. We're planning on doing another hike this next weekend to help build up my endurance. My goal is to nail all of the 46 High Peaks in the next 5 years....by the time I hit 35 years old.

It sure was nice to go for my weigh in this past week at Weight Watchers and find out that I had lost 2.6 pounds. That was a nice and pleasant surprise for all my hard work this past week.

Have a great week!

Dream BIG!

-Erika

Weekend Jaunt....

Today, we took a little bit of a jaunt around the corner and down the road from where we live. I love living here. Around every corner is nature's playground.

Not far from where we live is a great train trestle....it's still in use and below it is a fantastic cascading waterfall. It's not too fast, not too cold and not too deep. It's a perfect spot to take the kids on a hot summer day.

I've actually been over the road bridge (which you can't see in this picture, but it's behind the trees behind the trestle) many times for walks and driving to the lake, but I've never been down to the creek. David likes to take the kids down here on a regular basis since it's close by and easy to get to. He had promised the kids that he would take them down there today. I hadn't planned on going down, but my daughter was quite insistent. I couldn't say no, so I gave myself a little bit of a mental boost and packed my water shoes, camera and sketch book and headed out with the family.

I never took the sketchbook out because I had such a great time traipsing through the water to get to the falls (we had to take a path down the hill and through the woods to be able to get to the creek, then head up the creek to the falls) and sitting down and watching my husband and kids play in the water.

Usually, Zach is all about the bugs. Lately, when he's at the water, it's all about the fish. His bug nets double as fish nets now. It's amazing how skilled he is at not only catching bugs with one fell swoop of his net, but also fish! He's amazing!

I love this picture of him in his mud boots. He usually wears sandals when he's outside, but his sandals finally gave up the ghost and took their resting place in the dumpster. They lasted him through last year and this year and, after being held together by strong medical tape to get even more life out of them, they finally bit the dust. I had held off buying him a new pair this year because they seemed to be doing alright. I underestimated this little guy. He wore them hard and by the time they fell apart for good, the stores around here were getting rid of their sandals on clearance to make room for fall and winter footwear. And doesn't it just figure? The only sandals that were left were too small for him. Girly ended up with a pair instead, but I don't think those will make it to next year for her. Good thing they were only $4 for the pair!

Anyway.........the funniest thing about these mud boots is that Zach will go in the water WAY past the top of the boots. One of the reasons he wore the boots was because they have good traction on the bottom and the creek can be a little slippery in places, especially on submerged rocks. Whenever Zach got out of the water, you could hear the water sloshing around in his boots. He walked back up the trail and down the road, all the way back to our house with his boots full of water and didn't think anything of it. I had thought about suggesting to him to empty them out, but it was too cute, so I didn't say a thing.

The first picture in this post is looking up at the trestle from the bottom of the waterfall.

This picture to the left here is looking down the creek from the bottom of the waterfall. It was such a beautiful day today......and the way the light fell on the trees and the creek was a bit magical.  I kept expecting to see fairies flitting about in the woods and above the creek.

We DID see a muskrat hop out of the creek and run up the falls, though. Not quite the same as seeing a fairy, but the kids had never seen one outside of a page in a book, so that was pretty cool for them.

This creek is actually submerged in the spring time by the melting snows. Its also grows twice the size in width and goes far beyond, to the right, from what yo u see in the picture. We haven't had a lot of rain lately, so the water level is really low right now. There's still a bit of a pool at the bottom of the falls, though, which is perfect for netting fish (Davy and Zach caught quite a few and they were actually pretty big....I was thinking they'd be minnow size, but they were about 3 or 4 inches long each!). Davy even stood in the pool really still for a while and the fish were nibbling on his toes. They didn't seem to be afraid of anyone. Except after they were caught, examined and then put back in the water.....they wanted to get away pretty quick.

The falls are a great place to sit and cool off. They're also a great place for a little Girly to splash her Dad. God forbid if you splash her back....but Davy is really great about it and humors her. I love to sit off to the side and hear her giggle as she gets him all wet. And I love to listen to him humor her and put up a silly, fake fuss when she splashes him. It's definitely some of the best theatrics ever!

I didn't realize what I was missing out on when they went on these little jaunts. I'll definitely have to go again sometime soon. Maybe I'll even take the kids myself this week during the day. Zach is done with his 6 weeks of summer school as of this past Friday. They'll be wanting something to do and this week is supposed to be a warm one. It'll be a good place to take a picnic lunch and cool off.

And now it's outside for me......I'm going out in the backyard to see if I can see any of the Perseid meteors. This is supposed to be the best night for them, but I fear the sky is starting to cloud up a bit. I saw some heat lightning earlier and the weather channel is calling for isolated thunder storms here tonight, so there might not be much to see. Here's to hoping.

Oh, I've recently updated Zach's list of "places he's traveled" through the Postcard project that's been going on since the end of November. (Look at the sidebar, to the right of this post) Click here to see that original post ----> Help Zach see the world!

Thank you to everyone that have sent postcards, little gifts (those were totally unexpected by so appreciated!) and well wishes to him! It's been a great project and he has 7 photo albums full of postcards from all over the US and the world! We enjoy every one of them that comes in!
Have a wonderful week everyone!
-Erika

We took off for the weekend......

One of the best things about living in New England is that a great camping trip is never far away.

This past weekend, we took off across Lake Champlain and into the Adirondack Mountains of New York. We found a really great campground along the Ausable River.

Now, if you know us well enough, you know that we're not big fans of camping in RV parks or over-run campgrounds. When we want to get away, we want to get away from EVERYTHING.

Last month, we went to a fantastic state park in New York and LOVED the campsite we stayed in. We had to pack up a canoe with all of our stuff, then paddle a mile and a half across the pond to our campsite. There was NO ONE ELSE around. Just the way we wanted it.

This past weekend, we wanted to go to the same state park and campsite, but it was already booked. I searched online for another campground in the nearby vicinity and found one that had a "wilderness camping area." It look intriguing so we booked a couple nights there.

It wasn't AS "wilderness" as we would have liked, but it's definitely one of the better campgrounds we've stayed at. We had a little bit more room to ourselves in the "wilderness area" and the river was right below our camp site. There was a bit of a steep bank to climb down, but it was worth it. The kids got to go swimming, Zach got to catch fish and frogs in his net, Girly got to go exploring, I got to sit on the river bank and read my magazines (I even went for a dip in the river the first night because it was SO hot and humid out) and Davy took his kayak out for a long paddle. Girly really enjoyed swimming across the river with her life jacket on.....almost a month ago, she found out that we weren't kidding when we told her that her life jacket would help her float. Now she has no qualms about swimming in deep water if she has her life jacket on.

Zach is always happy to just be outside and catch whatever moves. The river has lots of fish in it, and the small ones were gathered near the shore. Perfect for Zach. He caught SO many of them! He was putting them in water bottles, keeping them for a while to watch them and then releasing them back into the river.

We stayed for 2 nights, roasted marshmallows over the fire, let the kids play in the pool (here they had this BIG river to play in but they wanted to try the pool out), took part in a campground-wide hayride and then let the kids partake in a treasure hunt.

I realized how much we've become like my parents.....driving around and taking in the scenery, while the kids were in the back asking when we were going to go back to the campground. How well I remember doing that as a kid. Those weekend drives seemed to take SO long. I wanted to be out of the car and playing outside. The kids handled it well, though.

My daughter is quite the ham and is very rarely ladylike or clean when she eats. I made a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins before we left for our camping trip (because I didn't want to waste the already over-ripe bananas). I figured they would be a good snack to take along and my kids LOVE them. It is SO hard to keep this child clean, but how can you be mad an adorable face like this?

On our way home yesterday, we took a side trip to something we've heard about but have never seen: Ausable Chasm.

What a beautiful sight! We weren't able to go onto the vast network of trails and explore too much, but just going over the bridge and peering down into the chasm and looking at Rainbow Falls was an amazing sight! The trails take you into the chasm for about 4 miles of hiking. We didn't plan on the cost (which is a little high, in my opinion...it would have cost us $48 to get in as a family) and we didn't plan on the time to take a 4 mile hike, but eventually, I would like to go back, simply because I hear that it's absolutely gorgeous and you don't quite get the full effect unless you've seen it all!

Here is a shot of Rainbow Falls, which can be seen when standing on the Route 9 bridge over the river. The bridge itself is also very pretty to look at.

I hope you're all enjoying your summer just as much as we are.

-Erika

Snowman-Angel

(click on pictures for a larger view)

Shortly after the big snowfall that we got on Valentine's Day, my daughter (who is always called Girly around the house) wanted to go outside and be a snowman-angel. Lately, she's been in a very creative mood. She's always had the creative gene.....but she's really tapped into it as of late. A couple weeks ago, she told my husband that when she grows up, she wants to be a mom and an artist, just like me. :) Awwwww....that made my heart melt.

She's been telling us that she can make anything we want. All we have to do is tell her what we want and she'll make it.

She made herself a mask after the snowfall. It was the face of a snowman. It was the most adorable thing....she drew on the carrot nose, the coal mouth and even put on rosy cheeks and eyelashes.

She wanted to be a snowman-angel in the worst way, though. I was trying to think of where she would come up with something like that, but the more I've thought about it over the past couple of weeks, I realized that she probably came up with it from making snow angels in the snow.

She wanted wings. She brought me some construction paper and I cut out some blue wings and taped them to the back of her jacket. She was ecstatic! She was hopping and leaping through the snow, pretending to fly.

There are days when she does things that make me smile and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There are days when I realize afresh that I'm raising a miniature (but more potent) version of myself.....and that is scary sometimes. I'm just glad that most of the memories that I'm storing away are the warm and fuzzy ones.

Once Upon a Time.....

Once upon a time, an extreme Daddy made an extreme snowboard ramp in the yard. This was so that he could practice his snowboarding jumps.

One day, the Daddy’s extreme little girl-child decided to climb up the ramp.

 

The girl-child got all the way to the top of the ramp and was quite shocked, but also pleased, with herself.

The girl-child thought she could fly if she spread her wings and took a leap of faith.

The girl-child flew…..at least for a little while.

The girl-child landed in the snow, but she still had a smile on her face.

The girl-child realized that you don’t always fly the first time. After all…..wings don’t completely stretch the first time. You need to keep stretching and keep trying until you succeed.

…….may this girl-child keep trying, keep stretching, keep taking those leaps of faith until she flies straight and true. Just like her daddy and mommy wish for her.

Things as they are lately.....

I can't begin to thank you all enough for the sweet emails, the cards, the comments, etc. that you have posted during this time. I sincerely appreciate it all!

I was trying to decide what I should type up here and figured I would just cut and paste from another online journal that I have. It's raw, open and honest.......just a fair warning.

Thank you again!!! :)

I have my moments. There are things to keep me busy throughout the day. I try to get myself so tired that I fall asleep when I hit the pillow, but sometimes it doesn’t work and I think about Grandma and start to cry. There are times when I’m not busy enough during the day and I think about her again and I break down. I go through times of having regrets and then work through them and feel better about it. Then I take them back and start feeling them all over again. It’s a give and take. Over and over again. I imagine that’s only normal. After all, I still live with regrets 17 years after my Opa died. And I’m sure I’ll have regrets when my Oma dies someday.

Something that I’ve held to since I was MUCH younger (not like I’m all that old now…..I’m only 30, though sometimes I feel like I’ve lived 3 times that long with all the bizarre life experiences I’ve banked up in my 30 short years) is that the last words that the people I love the most hear out of my mouth are “I love you.” Whenever Davy or the kids or I leave the house, or whenever I talk on the phone with my parents or grandparents, or even online with my closest and dearest of friends, as well as when Davy and I fall asleep at night……the last thing I want people to hear coming out of my mouth, or typed from my fingers, is “I love you.” You never know when your time, or their time, is going to come up. I don’t want anyone that I love and care about the most to have words other than those to be ringing in their ears or going through their minds as my last words, other than “I love you.” I have heard so many stories of people that have died and the last thing they said was something that no one wants to remember, something that hurts them to think about it even years later. I don’t want that to be the case with me. Honestly, I can’t even remember how far back it goes that I’ve felt like this…..yes, it’s been that long.

I called my grandmother a week ago today. That was the last time I talked to her. I knew she didn’t have the energy to talk, but I wanted my grandfather to at least hold the phone to her ear so she could hear me say that I loved her. I am so thankful that she at least had enough energy to breathe out the same words back to me. I will always be grateful for that, as they are the last words we each said to each other.

I wanted to call her on Thursday of last week to let her hear me say it again, as I wanted to be able to say it as many times as I could to her, for as long as I still had time. I told my grandfather that I would call back when she wasn’t napping so that Girly could tell her the same thing. Well, it never happened. Between the time I got the kids home from school and had to leave for work, there was less than an hour in there and chaos always ensues when the kids come home from school. Thursdays are always chaos because there’s less than an hour from the time the kids come home, Davy comes home and then I’m out the door to work. There’s getting all the coats, hats, mittens, backpacks and boots put away, emptying out the homework, getting the kids a snack, trying to referee between the kids, etc. I thought about it at work that night….that I never got to call her. I told myself I would do it that night when I got home, but I knew that she’d likely be sleeping, so I told myself I would do it the next morning. I knew the nurses would be there in the morning, so I wanted to wait till they left. It never happened. The nurses got there and Grandma had passed away. I kicked myself for not calling when I should have. That’s the first thought that came to mind when my mom called and gave me the news. I had told myself the night before that I didn’t want to have the regret of not calling her when I said I would before she passed away and it was like my worst nightmare come true. The thing that I said I didn’t want to happen……happened. I remember telling my mom on the phone, when she called with the news, “I should have called her. I knew this would happen. I should have done it.”

I don’t want to live with regrets. It happens, though. We’re only human. That’s the way life is. We have regrets, we mull them over and work them out. Then we take them back again and embrace them tight, only to let them go once again. The cycle repeats itself. They’re part of the memories that we process as we work through life experiences.

I’ve been working through this one over the past 5 days and I’m sure I’ll still be working through it 30 years from now, just on a less frequent cycle. Time doesn’t always completely heal. It just waters down the pain.

I keep telling myself that it’s okay. How many times can “I love you” be the last words I say? Every time I am blessed with the opportunity to say them. That’s how many times. I keep telling myself not to live with regret…..that the last words that we both said to each other were the words I wanted us both to hear, “I love you.” If that’s the last words we both said, that should be enough. But enough love is never enough. There’s always room for more. There’s always going to be a time when I want another chance for the last words to be, “I love you.” I want today to be another chance to say, “I love you.” I want tomorrow to be another chance. And the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that…….but the reality of it is…..I will have to live with the fact that last Wednesday was the last time. And until I accept that reality, I will always want another chance. And is that really so bad? I don’t think so.  I’d rather keep wanting another chance than to accept that I never will have another chance.

Update on my grandmother

Thank you all for your kind words, the comments, the personal emails, the thoughts, prayers and more, during this time. I appreciate all of you and never dreamed that I would make such wonderful friends through such a simple thing as this blog. I truly am blessed!

Grandma is still holding on. We’re not sure how she’s made it this long. It can’t be too much longer.

We were able to go up on Tuesday night to visit with her. We brought along the pictures that the kids drew and both Grandma and Grandpa both loved them. I had also printed out some pictures of all of us, taped them to a piece of cardboard and set it up where she could see them. We were able to be there for a couple of hours and I was able to lay down next to Grandma and talk with her. She loved the card I brought, though I had to have my husband read it out loud because neither Grandma or I could do it.

We went back up on Wednesday during the day (Davy had to take the day off because it was too cold to work outside….he’s a carpenter and it was impossible to work outside in -25 below wind chill weather) and were able to be there for another hour.

My parents are still camped out at my grandparents’ house and my dad has been reading Bible passages to my grandmother, as per her request. My mom is a bit exhausted as it’s emotionally and physically draining for her, though my grandfather has really appreciated all the help they’ve been to them.

In the meantime, my dad had to drive my uncle to the hospital yesterday and we’re not sure how long he is going to be there (my uncle lives with my grandparents). I can’t go into the details on this situation, but it’s hard on my mom and my grandparents, so if you could please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers, we’d appreciate that.

My parents have to leave on Monday to go back to Rhode Island, but my grandmother has finally agreed to hospice care….as long as it’s under her terms. We’re thankful that she’s allowing that because it will really relieve my grandfather, especially now that my uncle is in the hospital.

Again, thank you all SO much for the love, prayers and support you’ve been to us! Stampers truly are an awesome group of people!