Turning Hobbies into Family Time

Time together is something that I really treasure and I want to remember all the togetherness we had when I look back on these years with my young children.  I want to remember how Drew and I took our hobbies and rather than pushing them to the side after having children, we embraced the change and adapted to INCLUDE our children. I LOVE a long run.  I love training and running marathons.  I love the mental and physical challenge of pushing myself to run faster and longer and harder.  I simply love it.  While I may be in a season where I don’t find it fair to my family to train for a marathon (4 hour sessions on the weekend, yeah right!), I adapted my runs and now push my body to run FAST rather than the leisurely pace I did in the past. One of my favorite things now about running is that I can take my boys with me.  I love being able to include them on my runs and I have a buddy to talk to along the way.  While there are certainly days that one or both of the boys don’t 100 percent enjoy being in the stroller, most days they do.  We always end (or in the middle) going to a park for them to play at.  Its important that they have fun and burn some energy after being strapped in a stroller. Drew loves to bike and to boat.  Both of these hobbies I enjoy as well (boating far exceeds biking in my opinion). Both are now family affairs! For Christmas, I gave Drew a Burlee Bee tow behind for his bike.  The boys love hanging in the back together and we have taken advantage of the beautiful, unseasonable warm weekends with 14 mile bike rides as a family (ending, of course, at a park). I love my little family and love experiencing things with them.  I hope that the boys will enjoy continuing our family hobbies forever and we will be a running/biking/boating crew 🙂