Zip-Lining

The boo and I took the crew zip-lining. Looks fun, eh? Twas. Now hold the image below in your head while I take a second to get you spun up on a few things.

Thing 1: My boys are very safe. Around the house and playing outside they'll rough house and jump off things like there's no tomorrow. My little one has torn more jeans than I have fingers and I'm surprised he hasn't broke a bone yet because he's so rambunctious. But! If we take them hiking or boating or on a roller coaster or climbing up 212 stairs they tend to err on the side of caution. They get it from their fathers. Yes, both of them.

Thing 2: Ariana is fearless. Ariana is down for adventure. Ariana is my P.I.C.

Thing 3: I love trying things I've never done. My motto is: You only live once and tomorrow's not a guarantee. Okay, that's not my motto, but it sounded good so let's just roll with it. Basically I love doing new things. I have a very short attention span. Seriously. I lose interest way easy, so I need to keep myself engaged with things that get my heart pumping. Even if it's something as simple as taking a vacation and having no clue what we are doing. You know those people that know every sight they want to see and every restaurant they will eat at and have enough cash pulled from the ATM ahead of time because they're planners? Well that ain't me. And I'll admit that sometimes it bites me in the ass because it puts me in a bind at times. But some of my best stories come from shit like that. My favorite memories. And I've stumbled across some pretty awesome people and places because I didn't have a plan. I'm not safe. I'm rarely prepared. And the few times I do try to make plans they typically fall through so I see it as setting myself up for disappointment, so I choose to go with the flow. That'll be my motto: Go with the flow.

Thing 4: I'm that mom that has my kids do things outside their comfort zone. They typically roll their eyes in the moment but they also typically walk away loving whatever it was that we did and thanking me over and over for "forcing fun" as we call.

So when we went to Thetford Forest one weekend and saw that they offered zip-lining I was all...uh we need to get up on that. Fo' real doe.

So we came back the next weekend (they were all booked up the day we happened to be there) and the adventures began.

Daddy and Bubba did the adult course while I stayed on the ground and kept the little ones entertained. Ariana wanted to do the adult course but if you know her, she's itty bitty, so she wasn't tall enough. So I opted to go with her on the junior course. Owen was having none of it and since I checked out the courses and they were pretty high (even the junior one) I decided not to "force fun" in this case because forcing fun would've meant years of therapy and eternal anger at Mommy.

So we did things like walk Sam along some trails.

Count how old a tree was.

Play on random equipment.

Eat ice cream and such at 10AM.

And stumble across Daddy and E during part of their three hour course.

Then it was me and sissy's turn.

Owen, again, hung out on the ground with Daddy and E. They disappeared about half an hour into our course.

I assumed they went to play on the massive slide in the back of the forest that Owen finally had the courage to conquer the weekend prior with Daddy by his side.

Meanwhile, Air and I did our course. It may have been the junior course but let me tell ya, there were a few bridges I crossed that made me squeal and wonder how the 8-year-old in front of me made it. Air showed zero fear, and didn't squeal once.

Before we left we found Owen a "munchkin zip-line" as I call it. He loved it. Probably did it at least five times. All in all we all walked away saying we did something that day that we had never done before. I'd say that's a: Mission Accomplished.