It sucks when your kid is sick. And you have to stay home and snuggle (wink, wink)
[… and while they’re sleeping, you make the *best* batch of hummus you’ve ever made… and then you realize that you didn’t pay ANY attention to your ingredient proportions. Arg! ]
Anyway… when kids are sick, I am a firm believer in resting, snuggling and warm soup. BUT I am also a big believer in fresh air and sunshine, even in the middle of winter. So as soon as the little guy woke up from his nap, we got bundled to go pick up his sister from school. No overly-rushed car pick-up today… we were going to walk.
It was a gorgeous, sunny -11°C day. With Ottawa’s record-setting snowfall the other day (50+cm in 24 hours!), I decided to bring a sled along just in case 😉 We are about a 15 minute walk from the school by road… Or, about an hour walk if you take the forest trails 🙂
What a perfect day.
Instead of more sit-on-our-butt time in the car, we crawled, climbed, slid, explored and laughed all the way home (admittedly, there was a small amount of whining when kid1 face-planted down a hill, but the recovery was swift and we kept on going)! Well worth the extra 45 minutes it took us.
Our snow-covered jungle gym in the woods.
Thank you to Katy Bowman and Susanne at Kangaroo Fitness for the movement inspiration. But most of all, thank you to my incredible mom who took her three kids exploring in the forest all the time. I hope this post can inspire others to slow down, take some extra time, walk more, move your body and just enjoy nature.
Sometimes you need to see things from a kid’s perspective… just look at that incredible blue sky…
Eat well. Cook with your kids. Embrace natural movement. Reduce waste. Be well. 
You are trying to trick me into missing winter. And it’s almost workng! Instead I will remember it vividly, fondly, and gratefully. Would have been awful to miss that kind of winter fun with my 3 kids. We spent a lot of time in the woods too–magical.