April - no drinking

Unlike March, April's without went swimmingly!  Avoiding drinking was very easy, and Josh and I both succeeded with flying colors.

The only time Josh or I felt challenged was when we went skiing.  After finishing up our ski day, heading down to the camper, taking Leonard for a long walk and getting dinner together, it was 7 o'clock.  Then we realized we didn't have anything to do.  We might have gone to the Elk for a beer, but that was out.  None of our other friends brought their campers up that weekend, and UNO is only fun for so long. 

It was actually really interesting to learn how hard not drinking at Crystal was.  I didn't realize how much of the fun of taking the camper up is the ability to have a few drinks after a ski day, and that skipping that part changed the experience.  Its something we could get used to but it was an eye opener.  And that, is the entire reason we are doing the year without, to be more aware of these types of things.


That said, I did go to Boston and visit Belle in April.  I see her 3 times a year if I'm lucky and I can't be expected to have a girls weekend without sharing a bottle of wine with my best friend.  I visited for 3 days.

April total:
Josh: 0
Kiki: 3

March...in June

March update!

It took me so long to get to this because I am ashamed of how awful we were on the withouts in March.  The goal was to get rid of one thing every day, and we thought it would be easy.  We were so wrong!

I took a piece of paper and wrote the days of the month on it.  Every time we got rid of something I added it to the list.  Every day we missed, I wrote an "X" on it.  Here it is.

I tried (in vain) to continue this without through April and beyond, which is why some of the "X's" have an item next to them.  It didn't work.  "Cleaned out fridge"?  I got desperate...

If I do this one again, it will be get rid of 31 things (or however many days there are in the month), but not one thing every day.  Its very hard to come up with one thing each day, it would be easier, and probably more effective to do a couple of mass clean outs where we come up with a bunch of different things to get rid of at one time.  Lesson learned.

Bad month for us, good month for charity - Add to the Tally:

Josh: 28
Kiki:  21

Lime Kiln Trail

Over the Memorial Day weekend Josh and I went for a hike with Grandma, Papa, Dad, Kelsey and Leonard.  Grandma, an avid hiker, selected an awesome hike - The Lime Kiln Trail in Granite Falls.  It was a 7.5 mile round trip out to a great spot on the river for lunch with beautiful views and lots of cool artifacts on the way.

This spot was a little hairy. There was a thin board you had to cross, but we all made it just fine!

In the early 1900s this was an actual lime kiln site.  There were all sorts of neat artifacts along the trail.  I really enjoyed the old saw blades.

There were a ton of them, and it makes you think about what it might have been to use those giant things out in the wilderness.

This was a piece to an old stove.  I thought it seemed awfully pretty to haul out to a work site.

Here is Josh with his best Chandler expression, next to the actual Lime Kiln.

Here is me starting to climb it.  This is before I realized it'd be impossible to get down safely, and before we saw the sign telling us not to climb it.

Here is Dad - I think he is telling us how tall something was?

 Kelsey and Leonard, leading the way.

I'm happy we went, we really enjoyed seeing everyone and it reminds me that even though it can be hard to find the time to get together.  Its always worth it, and we need to do it more often!