The Tower Hike.

 We've been back from Florida for awhile now, and I'm going to try to get back to regular blogging.

We came back to a different neighborhood. We live in a new development, and many houses were started while we were gone, and a whole new road was completed.

Harris has decided to join the world of scootering, and much to my happiness, does not mind a hand-me-down princess scooter. 

We have not lived in Florida for five years, but I'm still surprised by the seasons up here in the Northeast. And then spending some time down there again threw me off even more. I always expect that it will be warm in March (it's soooo not) and that it will stay hot through October (it so will not). But it's been a very pleasant mid 70s, and I'm loving it. And trying not to dread the upcoming winter. I promised Dan I would "try to get into it" this year, which will be a hard goal to achieve because there are no specific parameters. Does this involve smiling every time I freeze my buns off as I scrape my windshield? Does it mean leaping in the air with glee every time I go for a run and can't feel my face? Do I have to make snow angels sans clothing in order to prove my "getting into it-ness"? I know not. 

But I'm totally great with autumn, and so we've been late-summer/autumn baking this week, which involves lots of zucchini.

Zucchini bread, muffins and cake have all been on the menu this week.

And we went for a hike. There's a famous local hike that involves a site-seeing tower at the end that has been recommended to us many times. The tower has been closed due to Covid until just recently, so we took advantage and went. We had a neighbor with us, and I was quickly reminded that I'm much more protective of other people's kids than my own when they are under my supervision. My kids fell on the hike (there was a steep hill), and I was my usual nurturing self ("you're fine you're fine you're fine"), but when our friend fell, I picked him up and carried him and worried that I wasn't being a good enough caretaker. 

We arrived at the tower, and I was excited to climb the stairs to the top. I actually love stairs. But then we saw this:

The down arrow is probably confusing. There was an "up" side and "down" side, and I took a picture of the down.

Yeah, a ladder! No stairs. It was apparent that one of us would have to stay down with the baby ("I volunteer as tribute!"), and the other would get to lug a bunch of kids up the ladder. I tried my best to convince the boys to stay down with me and nearly succeeded. They went up a rung or two, got scared and came back down with tears in their eyes. I was relieved because Dan plus the two girls would be a much easier scenario. But at the last second, the boys joined back in the group and begged to go. So Dan plus an 8 year old, 6 year old, 4 year old, and 3 year old made the trek up the very tall tower.

As the baby and I waited down below, other families arrived to climb the tower. Each and every single time, they would approach the inside and exclaim, "A ladder!?!?! Where are the stairs?" And then they would debate whether they were going to climb it or not. 

Usually the dad would say, "Well we all need to do it. We didn't drive and hike all the way up here for nothing!" And then someone else would say, "I hate enclosed spaces!" or "My equilibrium can't handle that!"

And I always felt obligated to inform them that my husband was in there with 92384727 kids, and they were taking a really long time and would be holding everyone up. I hated to add to the family conflict already taking place, but also wanted them to know what they were in for.

Every time one of our kids arrived at one of the "windows" (slits in the wall), they would stick their head in and tell me how awesome it was. Dan never stuck his head out. I don't think he thought the whole thing was super awesome.

At the top:

When they all came back down, they said that they loved it, and even Dan said it was worth it. He's a champ.

And here is our lovely Sunday photo from this morning. Harris was in timeout because he wouldn't stop screaming, Beck was down for a nap, and Gwen didn't want to take a picture.

The End.