Walking

I've become a walker. I stopped walking a long time ago when I bought my first car. I saw no need to walk, even if it were just to go down the street, when I could drive there.

Do I have a car now? Yep. And a van. We're a two vehicle family. Hubby takes the car to work in the city and I keep the van here at home with me because it has the car seats in it.

Before my weight loss journey started, I hardly ever walked anywhere with the kids. I drove to were ever we were heading. Now, we try to get in a walk every day.

I thought my oldest would hate going for walks. He wasn't used to them. And there are some days he complains. But for the most part, he's totally on board. I try to make it fun for him. We hit the trails and look at nature. We take pictures of our travels around town. We go to stores and I let him check out whatever he wants.

Today he decided we were going to walk all the way to Zellers. We hit the trail to get halfway there. Monkey loves the trail. We pass over an old train bridge. He loves stopping to look at the water.

 Today was cold, so we were all bundled up. I'm going to have to get a scarf or something to go over the little one's nose, cheeks and mouth.

We stopped to check out a bunch of ducks and geese who were enjoying the water near the trail. Why aren't they down South yet? Don't they know the snow is on it's way?

 When we got to Zellers, we wandered around to let ourselves warm up. It's cold out there today. We, of course, checked out the toy area. Today is the last day for the buy one Fisher-Price toy and get another on half off sale. There was one Little People nativity set left.

I wanted one last year, but waited too long and couldn't find one anywhere. I was so happy when I saw them a few weeks ago. I knew I was going to pick one up this year. So when I saw only one sitting there on the shelf, I decided to grab it. And since the sale was on, I grabbed a Little People farm play set to put away for Muffin for Christmas. Trying to balance the two big, bulky boxes on the stroller made me wish I had driven.
We walked home with those boxes balanced right above Muffin's head.
I'm happy to add that I was able to balance those boxes all the way home without them crashing down on Muffin's head.
Now I can't wait until we put up the Christmas tree so I can set out the nativity set under it for the boys to play with. I'm sure we'll have pieces missing within minutes and extras, like cars and trucks, around it, but that's okay. Monkey is in a Catholic school this year. He's learning about the Christian faith and is excited to have a baby Jesus in the house, "even if he is just plastic," as he declared.

Right before it started snowing on us, we saw a ton of geese in the field across the street from our house. We live in town, but it's a small enough town that we had a corn field to look at all summer. Now it's a goose field. There must have been at least a hundred of them, if not more. All noisely driving my poor cat crazy. He was glued to the living room window, watching all the birds he couldn't chase.

That's just an example of the birds. I couldn't get the whole field into one picture without loosing the birds.
They stayed until the snow started falling heavily.
Birds, birds, birds today. Fly south, birds! You're going to freeze your tail feathers off if you stick around here.
The boys and I ended up walking 3.7 miles this morning.
Tomorrow, after getting Monkey safely on the school bus, Muffin and I will go out for another walk.