Boston Brown Bread & A Very Big Hike

The boys started their morning with a thick slice of my warm-from-the-oven Boston Brown Bread with cinnamon and raisins.

They finished their afternoon with a 4.5 km (2 hr) hike at our favourite conservation area.  It was the first long hike that I have taken all three boys by myself.  They did amazing.  I did pretty well too given that I had to tote Alistair the whole way since Ian was not there to share the load.  

Liam was a super big brother and hand fed Ali his mid-hike snack and water while he was still in the carrier.  Big brothers taking care of little brothers is the best.

I intentionally planned this hike a little longer than usual to try and tire out my very energetic boys.  What I did not plan on; however, is that the more we hike, the stronger they get.  They plowed through the first half of the hike barely breaking a sweat even though we had to break trail through the fresh fallen snow for part of it. They were still running sections and bickering with each other over their walking sticks at the halfway point.  I did finally succeed in tiring them out by the end but I may have to rethink my strategy if I am only building up their endurance with longer and more frequent hikes as opposed to tiring them out.  Soon we will need to be hiking up mountains in order to exhaust them.  Sigh.