Here's To a Good One

Last year, we woke up on New Year's Day and decided to go for a hike to celebrate the new year as a family.  Castlewood Canyon was our destination; the weather was gorgeous and we had a great time, despite the fair amount of complaining from kid #2 about the ice on the ground.

I guess we made a new family tradition by engaging in the 2nd Annual Tunheim Family New Year's Day Hike.  I figure if we do this each year, by the time they are in college it may prevent behavior leading to major hangovers if they have an innate need to be one with nature on a New Year's hike.
. . .

Ok, I'm not really that naive, but it is still a nice family activity.

There is snow on the ground here in town, so there was some concern that we would have quite a bit wherever we were going (read: heightened complaints from son #2).  We chose to venture to Mt. Falcon Park, out near Evergreen on the Castle Trail.  There are ruins from a guy's home built out there in the early 1900s that we wanted to check out, and we figured the two mile roundtrip distance would be a nice balance between covering some ground and keeping whining to a minimum.

There was an awesome fallen tree at the beginning of the hike that the boys climbed, and it seemed like a great place to take a family picture.  Sam deftly nestled the camera between branches in preparation for setting the timer and decided to snap off a branch that was blocking Kenyon's face and ruining his composition.  Bad decision.  The force of Sam's mighty muscles upset the camera's precarious perch, sending it crashing into a branch below and into a deep pile of snow.  Needless to say, that was the end of our camera, and my hopes for a family picture were dashed.  I took a few with my phone, although none capture the awesome views of Red Rocks, the mountains, and the city in the distance.

Jackson and Alex, with their headlamps that Merry gave them for Christmas, were fully prepared for any impromptu spelunking missions they happened upon.

Kenyon was happy to ride in the backpack but did get out for a bit so he could nosh on some snow. (And don't be fooled by this picture--I carried hefty Kenyon half the time, but of course there's no picture documenting it.)

 I love people here.  You'd think not many people would be out and about in nature on the morning of January 1, with 40 degree weather and snow on the ground.  We saw couples with dogs, families, friends, all out hiking or cross country skiing and enjoying the day. 

Handsome Sam with roundy Kenyon :)

2010 marks a new decade.  My last decade was chock-full of law school, getting married, fixing up/selling first house and buying our present house, losing Sam's mom to cancer, and three pregnancies resulting in three kiddos.  Whew!  I'm looking forward to a calmer decade ahead.