Serious Exercise, Serious Fun

We have been staying local on weekends lately, partly because of lacrosse, but also because we know our summer weekends will often be far-flung across the northeast with visits to Long Island, Parishville, and Maine.  There is plenty to do here, though, and we have been keeping very active.  On Memorial Day we (Aiden, Andy and I) ran the Black Fly Blitz 5K in Wilmot- Aiden had his best time ever at 33 minutes, and came in 2nd in his age category.  He still sprints out of the gate for the first mile or so, and then is exhausted for the last one, so we're working on an actual J-O-G, which doesn't seem to come naturally!  Haley hung out with her bestie Ellis and had a great time running around the green in Wilmot collecting caterpillars and climbing trees.  This weekend we've got a trail run in Newbury- 6 miles for Andy and 1 mile for Aiden and Haley- glad that the bean gets to try a race again after her success with the turkey day chicken run.

Last weekend we decided to go for a day hike, somewhere not too far but a significant climb we hadn't tried before.  We chose Mt. Cardigan, and it turned out to be a perfect challenge, and hopefully good practice for tackling the "easy" whites later this summer.  Haley declared she was tired after about ten steps, but to her credit, she keeps slogging away and is easily encouraged with little fistfulls of gummy bears.  When we reached the bald summit cone, all her energy came back and she whipped off her shoes and stomped in all the high elevation puddles, running barefoot across the granite from one to the next.  Aiden did great the whole way, he is ready for a bigger challenge for sure.  We brought our trusty thermos of mountain tea, a tradition borrowed from Aunt Becky's family-- the kids absolutely love and look forward to a steaming cup of ultra-sweet tea while they take in awesome views from any summit.  Even Kimball got to come, though she doesn't care for mountain tea.