Throughout 2021, Sandra and I caught ourselves saying that this year was worse than 2020. It was a year that felt hard. Sandra was busy balancing both work and school… in a program that felt never-ending, and I was overwhelmed juggling writing deadlines and psychology work. In any downtime we had, we tried to find adventures as a family and spend time outdoors with Addie, while I also fought pregnancy fatigue and aches. However, when I look back on the year, I see so many incredible memories. This was an unforgettable year, and one I wouldn’t trade for the world.
The absolute highlight of 2021 is that last week, on Christmas Eve, we welcomed our newest adventure buddy, Eloise. We have so many exciting plans for 2022 that we can’t wait for her to join in on. Our family already feels more whole with her in it.
Here are some of the other highlights, month-by-month. So many beautiful memories!
January
The year started off with mild winter temperatures, which made getting outside relatively easy. We started the year off with a New Year’s Day hike, we had winter campfires, and we took our indoor play outdoors. Immediately after starting the 1000-Hours-Outside challenge, we noticed a shift in our moods, and what started as a challenge that we took on as a whim, quickly became a passion. We devoured books about the importance of getting outdoors with children, and we began looking for opportunities to get outside as a family. The challenge quickly became important to us, but at that point, we had no idea just how much the challenge would come to mean to our family!
February
February’s outdoor adventures all happened during the first half of the month, before the temperatures plummeted and the latter half of the month was spent indoors. Still, we managed a couple hikes at Elk Island National Park, we took in the ice sculptures at Hawrelak Park, and we cooked campfire gnocchi and built snowmen at night.
March
March brought warmer temperatures once again, and we didn’t hesitate to go outside and enjoy. We weren’t going to take the weather for granted.
Sandra and I decided to go on a ski trip together to Marmot Basin in Jasper, and we had my mom join us for the trip to watch Addie during the day we were at the hill. Sandra hadn’t done much skiing, but she did amazing, and the two of us had a great time spending an adult day outdoors while Addie soaked up her time in the mountains with Grandma.
April
The highlight of April, for me, was our Easter Egg hunt. Sandra and I hid Easter Eggs around our garden and then we watched Addie search for them to collect in her little Easter basket. I had thought that she wouldn’t really grasp the concept of an Easter Egg hunt until next year, but she surprised me with her excitement as she searched the garden for the little plastic eggs.
We had a second egg hunt later that day, with friends and their children. The second egg hunt we made more difficult, hiding the eggs in the forested part of our acreage. I have no doubt that we will be finding last year’s eggs this coming spring, still.
We spent a good deal of time this month outside learning how to clean up our garden and prepare it for summer. We raked up the detritus from the previous year, and took pride in learning how to care for our yard. It was a lot of work, but it was satisfying work, being out in nature, creating something we could take pride in.
May
May was when our 1000-Hours adventure really kicked into gear. With the warm weather and the snow being finally gone, our lives shifted from primarily indoors to primarily outdoors.
We learned to make our first ever jelly, harvesting dandelions from our garden and making a jelly from the flower petals. The result was delicious and it was a great activity for a toddler, who enjoyed plucking all the dandelion heads and collecting them in her bucket.
We also took a couple of road trips to do some hiking and exploring. The first of the road trips was to Drumheller, Alberta, where we hiked the badlands and the hoodoos. Addie looked so proud as she scrambled over the badland’s uneven terrain. We also took a daytrip to Siffleur Falls, where we fought some inclement weather but ultimately went on an incredible hike that we can’t wait to return to do again.
June
June’s warm weather meant time at the lake, trips to playgrounds around the city, zoo visits, and plenty of outdoor time in the yard. We spent most of this month close to home, but with the snow gone from the acreage, there was plenty to do without needing to drive anywhere.
July
In July, we went on our first family camping trip to Elk Island National Park. Addie had never slept in a tent before and we were apprehensive about how the night might go. We half expected to be packing up at 2 a.m. in a scramble to not wake the other campers around us. However, Addie slept great, and the trip began our love of camping. Sandra had not done much camping previously, either, and she took to it immediately. We all loved our night under the stars, and were quick to plan more trips as soon as we got home.
While at Elk Island, we also had the opportunity to take Addie kayaking for the first time. The kayak trip happened to fall right during her nap time, so our Astotin Lake exploration was short-lived, but we hope to be able to do more kayaking and canoeing next year.
August
We spent August with more hiking, playgrounds, and outdoor picnics with friends and relatives. For the first half of the month, I was cramming for my big psychology exam, so we had to stay fairly close to home. At the end of the month, however, I passed my exam and we celebrated by flying to Hawaii!
We had weighed the pros and cons of travel during a pandemic, and ultimately decided that we would go and take every precaution possible. We spent our entire trip keeping to ourselves and enjoying the outdoors: beaches, hikes, etc. It was our last chance for travel with only one child, and we soaked up all of the Addie time we could. I loved watching her glee as she played in the ocean.
September
The second half of our Hawaiian vacation included more hiking, sightseeing, and a camping trip. We had packed our tent with the hopes that we would be able to camp somewhere during our trip, and the camping did not disappoint. We stayed at Camp Olowalu and the experience was beyond magical. We wished we had camped for more than one night on our trip. We set up our tent near the beach, surrounded by chickens and palm trees. We watched the sun set from the beach, with Addie running happily into the waves, no other people around. Sandra and I had already picked out engagement rings, and decided that our sunset moment on the beach was the perfect moment to make our engagement official. We celebrated with a pizza dinner from Outrigger Pizza that we reheated over the campfire, and we watched the as the most incredible starlit sky appeared. Later, once Addie was asleep in the tent, Sandra and I laid out on our picnic table and watched shooting stars overhead. It was an evening that seemed almost too perfect to be real.
October
October was the month that got away from us. Between travel, family visits, and illness, we didn’t soak up fall in quite the way we’d hoped, but even so, we fit in a good deal of excitement. We visited the Edmonton corn maze, played in the leaves, carved pumpkins, and took Addie trick-or-treating for the very first time.
This seemed to be the month of calamities, and no one moment captures the essence of the month more than my boardwalk mishap with Addie. I took Addie to feed the ducks at our favourite wildlife preserve near our house. I had wanted to get photos of her in her Halloween chicken rider costume wandering through the duck sanctuary. Sandra had needed to take a phone call, and so instead of joining us, she went for a walk down the road outside of the wildlife preserve. Addie and I were having a great time, her feeding the ducks, and me taking photos of her, until we dropped the bag of birdseed over the edge of the boardwalk.
The boardwalk is not high off the ground, maybe three feet or just a little over that, and so I thought nothing of jumping down to pick up our trash. When I went to hop back up onto the boardwalk, however, I realized that with my very pregnant belly, I was not going to be able to get back up. I was stuck.
A phone call to Sandra, and a short wait later, I was back up on the boardwalk feeling quite silly and embarrassed by the whole event. Addie, of course, had to talk nonstop about how mommy got stuck and needed to be rescued. Our adventures don’t always go smoothly, but they’re memorable nonetheless!
November
November was unseasonably warm for the first half of the month, and we enjoyed a blissful snow-free start to the month. But by the time the snow did fall, we were beyond ready for it. Addie’s snowboard and skis had arrived and we were all eager to see what would happen if we took her out to the ski hill. We gave both a try this month, with Addie showing a clear preference for the snowboard. Watching her confidence blossom on the snowboard has boosted my confidence that this crazy idea of teaching our two-year-old to snowboard was not so crazy after all. It’s my hope that it can transform from a fun evening spent outdoors together into a lifelong gift, a skill she can enjoy for years to come.
This month, we attempted winter camping in our canvas bell tent with mostly disastrous results, but we are committed to learning from our mistakes and improving the experience for next time. Meanwhile, Sandra and I, determined to get the winter camping experience, went glamping at one of the Elk Island Geodomes. It was cozy and romantic and the perfect getaway before winter really set in.
December
December was a whirlwind of a month! We spent most of the month getting ready to meet our new little one, while trying to fit in our final hours of the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge before baby’s arrival. The weather was erratic, with freezing rain and deep-freeze temperatures, but we managed to finish up our hours and really live it up for our last month with only one child. We completed our thousandth hour on December 21st, three days before Eloise’s birth, on a snowy evening at Snow Valley Ski Hill. At nine months pregnant, following Addie up and down the snowboard hill was a challenge, but Addie had so much fun and I enjoyed that the challenge spurred us to spend that little bit more mom and daughter time together before a sibling joined the mix.
It’s hard to stay concise when talking about what the 1000-Hours Outside challenge has meant to us. It brought us all closer as a family, it encouraged more intentional parenting, we explored areas of Alberta that we might not have explored otherwise, we tried new things, we slept under the stars, and we were immeasurably more active than we’d have been without the challenge. Completing the challenge was a huge celebration moment for us.
Prior to that evening, we spent the month taking in every Christmas event that our city has had to offer. We went with friends to Zoominescence at the Valley Zoo, we went to the Christmas market at Fort Edmonton Park, we took in the lights at Luminaria and the Winter Wonder Forest, and we strolled Candy Cane Lane (though Addie lasted about 4 houses before the cold was too much that evening).
What’s Ahead in 2022?
Looking back at all of the memories we made in 2021 makes me even more excited for the new year to come. We will definitely be continuing on with another year of the 1000-Hours Outside challenge, this time with two children. We are planning to walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain from mid-April to mid-June, should the current global situation allow it, and we are already starting to think about the hikes we can go on this spring to train for the 800-kilometer pilgrimage we’ll be embarking on. Summer will no doubt bring more camping trips, and hopefully our schedules will allow us to go for a few nights at a time, not just quick single-night trips. We received a new tent for Christmas, one that will be large enough for Eloise’s pack and play, and we’re excited to try camping with an infant!
All-in-all we look forward to more time together and we hope to continue to try things that push each of us a little bit outside of our comfort zone.