The Trail

My mom friends and I from the neighborhood walk every morning with our double jog strollers (except Kody, who has a TRIPLE) to get exercise, fresh air, and talk. It is our "Mommy Time." Of course a lot of days it is just as much an exercise in patience as it is a physical exercise. For my kids, they see the stroller as a place for their own personal cage match! They can barely get along when they have to share the whole backyard or the bonus room, so when they are forced to sit in a 2x2 space... well, you can imagine the nightmare it becomes. It always starts with Aidan grabbing on to Alec thinking he is soooo funny all the while Alec is screaming his irritating, high-pitched squeal of a scream. Then suddenly he decides to fight back and squeeze Aidan or smack him and guess what... Aidan doesn't like that! And he starts crying and crying and unlike Alec who screams so Aidan will leave him alone and then is done with it, Aidan will cry and cry until someone (me) pays some attention to him and makes sure all is OK with his world. If it requires that Alec get some kind of punishment Aidan is so grateful he will tell me, "Thank you, Mommy" while he watches his brother get a spanking or a time out. UGH! It is actually wearing me out just talking about it! So, anyway, while I wouldn't want to start my day without my morning walk, sometimes it doesn't exactly start our days on the best foot. Since starting Weight Watchers I have felt more compelled to "step things up a notch" especially since I have been "walking the neighborhood" for almost 6 years and I doubt that it is doing much for me anymore. So for awhile now we have had some different routes that we take. This morning we did The Trail. Which is this great dirt path back behind our houses and there is a great big hill to hike at the end. Today I decided to skip the big hill at the end and instead run up and down a smaller but steeper hill as many times as I could. It was a great workout! However, it was day three of wearing my brand new shoes and I had a blister starting going into it and of course that only made it worse. I powered through the best I could. I have decided one of things I like best about blogging is using pictures to tell these stories as well, so I am including a picture of not only my shoes that are three days new but look 3 years old already but my blister as well!!

The kids are in the backyard playing with their friend, Katja. I can hear the screaming and yelling.. mostly Aidan at Alec... so I am counting the minutes till I go down and make them lunch and put them to bed for 2 hours! Now THAT is what I call "Mommy Time!"