Weekly Mileage Recap & Tapping Our Trees

This past week my mileage was a little lower than the week before, but I didn't do too badly.

Wednesday we were in town for some car maintenance and the weather was gorgeous, so we took the opportunity to hike one of the trails on that end of town. We got a bit of a late start because of the car maintenance so we only went about 1.3 miles up the trail rather than the full 2 miles. We stopped to play in a section of an giant old poplar and I got some good photos.

I knelt on the ground and looked up through a hole in the tree to get this shot- isn't it cool?

I pushed Ocean up the hill in the stroller while Sunshine walked and River ran back and forth. He wore himself out and hopped on for a ride back down the hill. I didn't want to move Ocean, so he River got to squeeze into the lower seat. He actually fit pretty well. The main concern is weight distribution- the heavier weight needs to be up in the front seat, so it's not something I'll do on a regular basis.

Several times River flopped on the ground and asked me to take a picture. He stopped doing that when he flopped down right in front of the stroller and I couldn't swerve entirely away in time and ran over a finger. At that point he decided it wasn't that much fun after all.

Friday I hopped on the treadmill while getting some work done. The babysitter couldn't come because she hurt her ankle, so I hit the treadmill while the boys were napping.

Sunshine in the sunshine

I had hoped to get on the treadmill again on Saturday, but the nursery crud got me. Last Sunday was Ocean's first official day in nursery and like River last year, he brought home a bunch of germs. Within a day or two he had a snotty nose and was sounding a bit hoarse. Friday evening I felt a sore throat coming on and it was worse Saturday morning.

River looking almost angelic- he was looking up and I was looking down through a hole in the tree

We had our pinewood derby Saturday morning though, so I got up and powered through it (I was running the computer again), but afterwards we came home, ate lunch, and took naps. I totally dozed off, which rarely happens. We had made arrangements earlier to have some friends come and help us tap our trees, so after our naps, we got up and got our supplies ready.

Ocean and his sticks. Seriously, if his feet are touching the ground, he's looking for sticks to pick up and carry around.

Yeah, I don't know why he's sticking a dirty finger in his ear either :)

We hiked around the property and tapped our three walnut trees and six maples. I was tired by the time we were done, but it was good to be out in the fresh air. Our winter hasn't been super cooperative (i.e., not very cold for most of the last couple months) While we had one cold snap when we got snow, it was too cold to tap the trees then, and when it warmed up it warmed up too much to tap the trees. It's been on the warmish side lately, but it's finally gotten below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, which is optimal tapping weather. We just haven't had the cold weather we need before that.

we got a little snow last night!

When we tapped the trees we noticed that the black walnut sap was flowing, but the maple sap was not. We're really curious to see how this pans out- do we only get black walnut sap? Will the maple sap start flowing now that it's colder at night? Will we get enough sap to do anything at all with? Only time will tell.

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday: 2.66 miles hike with the kiddos
Friday: 3.52 miles walked on the treadmill
Saturday: about .5 miles hiked around our property
      total mileage: 6.68 miles

hike #4 for the 52 hike challenge
20.51 total miles towards the 365 mile challenge- almost caught up!