This is my life. My thoughts, my feelings, and the things I spend my time doing and loving. Take your time, but not too much of it--it's far too valuable. Most of all, enjoy the adventure!
Nothing gives me more joy than spending time in the outdoors with those I love, and my grandkids are some of the finest reasons for being out there. I love being able to share the outdoors experience with them. My love of the outdoors is one of the things I'd really like to pass on to all my children and grandchildren.
Jude getting ready to go.
Yesterday, my son Ben and I took his kids and three of my other four grandkids up the Red Pine Trail in Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was great! Ben packed little Jude on his back, and eventually, ended up carrying Mimi for significant portions of the trail. A couple of the other kids were getting tired and the breaks just weren't cutting it for getting them rejuvenated (and at least one of them needed to go potty really bad and couldn't be talked into doing it in the woods), so we ended up turning back before making it to the lake, but we still had a lot of fun.
Early on in the hike. The kids were loving it.
We began hiking right at 9:00 and decided after a few minutes that we'd need to probably stop at around 11:30 to head back. It was a little cool at first and at least one of the kids put on her jacket. It's a shady trail for the most part, which is great on a hot summer day. The kids were enamored with the ground squirrels (potguts), chipmunks, and butterflies that were in profusion.
These little critters were everywhere.
Not as many wildflowers as Albion Basin maybe, but there is beauty everywhere you look.
After about a mile and a half, a guy passed us and said that we only had two miles left to the lake and I knew that we weren't going to make it. About a quarter mile later, I took Taggart and Gillian up the trail to look for a good place to eat lunch, while the others waited, but we weren't going to find that either, at least not in a short enough distance for those who were too tired to continue.
White Pine Creek, where we ate lunch.
We decided to go back down and eat by White Pine Creek that we had crossed about a half mile previously. All the kids had a good time hanging around the rocks and playing near the stream. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I'm not really a good gift giver, and it doesn't really matter to me if I receive any gifts. I like to be around my family and friends at Christmas time--that's my kind of gift. Gifts are one of my lowest things on my list of the Five Love Languages. I often find myself at a loss when it comes to choosing gifts for my grandkids. I'm ashamed to admit that I like to just find something and get it done. I've found though that the simple power of observation helps a lot. Here's an example. We have noticed that our grandkids when they're in a certain age range, always seem to love to find the flashlight in the house and play with it in a dark room. I was out at Harbor Freight last year and I saw on the shelf on sale some headlamps. This would be perfect for my grandkids, I thought, and I snapped up two of them, thinking of the two boys, Taggart and John, who are the same age and would love to play with them. I should've picked up more as the other kids would love them too. I probably will before I give any of them away. Noticing what they seem to have fun with, even if it's not necessarily a toy, can lead to ideas of what they might like.
Another thing that you can do is go to Amazon and type in the search box: toys for three year old girls, toys for five year old boys, toys for ten year olds, or any other combination you might need. This will give you a list of suggestions. I've found this to be quite useful.
You can type in the same kind of word combinations into Google and find websites like this: clicky-clicky
A time tested way of finding out possible gifts for kids is to ask their parents what they think their child might be interested in. We asked our son Ben and his wife Marie what kinds of things their kids might want and they gave us some direction--they said some kind of toys or activities that will help their kids to learn. This was very helpful.
All that being said, I've found that making sure you know the interests of the kids you are buying for goes a long way toward finding a gift those kids will love.
And now, here's a great song by the Oak Ridge Boys: Thank God for Kids
