Family Time

I have been craving some good ole' family time recently. I am not sure where the extreme craving is coming from except that the weather has been so beautiful and Jarrett and I have been so stressed out with all that is going on in our lives right now. And sometimes I just don't feel like we slow down enough to really relish in our little family of four. I really try to deliberately focus on certain points of each day with the girls. To treasure their youth, their smallness. To really enjoy our time together. Because, to be frank, I am really good at not doing that. I am really good at keeping myself busy and stuck inside my own head, escaping just enough to deliver that most recently demanded snack or change a dirty diaper. So I do try. And I find much joy and satisfaction when I do. But even though I try to do that for myself, on a personal level, there is still something to having all four of us together, present, really enjoying something as a family.

That is why I made it mandatory for the four of us to get out and do something fun together last Saturday. So we dusted off the baby backpack, filled our water bottles, and headed to Stone Mountain, where we walked the five-mile (approximately) loop around the base of the mountain. You might remember that we did this rather frequently with Elsa when Jarrett and I were training for our trip out to California. But this was the first time doing it with Avie, and it was the first time Avie had ridden in the backpack. She thought it was pretty fantastic, and I did not hear a complaint out of her the entire time. Because five miles is a little much for Elsa, she rode in the stroller, which I pushed. So that added 34 pounds-plus-stroller-weight to my walk. And Jarrett had Avie's weight and backpack weight strapped to his back. It was a little more exercise than we were used to getting here of late, to say the least. But it felt really good to get outside and move. Elsa conked during about the last third of the walk, mostly exhausted, I think, because of her incessant questioning about riding the train, which I mistakenly mentioned as a possibility at the beginning of the walk.

But ride the train we did. It's not cheap. Really, it is pretty ridiculous for what you get out of it. But I think the last time we did it was about two years ago with Elsa, so it is not like we throw out the cash all of the time. And, of course, the kids think it is awesome. To add excitement to our ride, we had to stop mid-loop and pick up some folks who were struggling on their walk up (or down) Stone Mountain. Police and medical people were there "rescuing" them and the whole nine. The girls were just perturbed that the train was not moving, especially Avie, who did not really nap much at all that day, perhaps because of the excitement from the ride in the backpack, and who thought the train ride was so fun that it seemed she would have literally climbed over the railing and jumped out with squealing delight. Instead, she screamed with dislike in us holding her back. Oh well. It was fun (and kind of funny) anyway.