Less Laboring

Last Labor Day, I had made some fun plans for us to do to celebrate our Labor Day.

First, we went to Salt Lake City's Extreme Yard Sale.

It was a combination of tons of yard sales in one area. They also had some free things for kid's to do, like these blow-up bouncy houses and slides and such.

Atalia wouldn't go any further than this, the little chicken.

They also had this train ride, that was pretty simple, but still a lot of fun.

Jen, (my sister) gave me this hairstyle idea to do with Atalia's hair.

(Did I do you proud, Jen?)

Then, I had this A-M-A-Z-I-N-G idea to hike up to this lake in the mountains and have a picnic.

We've started to hike this trail before with Atalia and she impressed us all with how well she did and it was a really fun trail to hike (mind you, we didn't even go a quarter of the way that day, Atalia hadn't gone a whole day without a nap and a decent night's sleep the night before, and we were carrying practically nothing).

The trail is a little under 3 miles there and back. I thought, no problem, that's like three laps around the Sugar House Park and Atalia was doing so well the last time we started to hike it. Piece of cake. This will be really fun, right?

So, I packed up our lunch, water, and a blanket. We had this backpack that my in-laws have been letting us borrow, that you can stick a toddler in. Although, we figured Atalia would want to walk anyway, but just in case she got tired, we would have that as an option.

Okay, I'll just get to the point... It (I) was miserable.

Although, it was beautiful at some points (though I would have appreciated it more if I weren't so miserable) (sorry, I may be over-using that word in this post)

Good news! James enjoyed it!

Do you want to know why it was so miserable? Haha well, I'm going to tell you anyways.

1. Atalia had a short night before, which also means that we did as well.

2. I thought we would skip nap time, so that we would have a good amount of time to finish our hike before it got too late.

3. Atalia stopped every 3 seconds (literally) to pick up rocks and sticks, which I had patience for for the first half hour of the hike.

4. I had pre-conceived ideas of the lake being some magical place.

5. Our things got really heavy after 15 minutes.

6. We didn't bring enough water (which is like hiking 101)

7. It is straight up hill 90% of the time (with a napless toddler)

8. My ankle that I rolled about a week ago, wasn't completely healed all the way yet (I'm really demonstrating my stupidity here)

9. Atalia wanted to be carried and NOT in the back pack (which goes back to that no nap thing)

10. It was taking us forever to make it up the mountain, having to stop frequently along the way.

We were both determined...

But, I hit a point where I just couldn't do it anymore (2 maybe 3 hours into it).

And I hate quitting.

We stopped and had our picnic, which we were so sick and tired that the food didn't even sound that good. A hiker just informed us that we still had about a mile left. James kept telling me that it was just probably just around the bend for the last hour lol.

Atalia was in pretty good spirits though, having finally been forced into riding in the backpack.

When we finally decided it was probably best to turn back, we booked it as fast as we could. We (I) wanted to put this hike in the past as fast as possible. Atalia fell asleep in the back pack, which helped.

As I was climbing down, I thought, "I better be at least losing a pound or two from this!" lol Our legs were shaking from exhaustion our entire way down the mountain, but we were determined to have this over with.

Anyway, we made it lol. I feel kinda bad for sharing such a miserable experience. The worst part (Sorry, it's the last of the negativity!) was feeling like a failure and a weakling... and I wish I would have made some smarter decisions.

Okay, positivity!

Other fellow hikers are like instant friends. Everyone is so friendly on the trail.

AND...I learned from it...

Next year, we won't do something so laboring on Labor Day weekend.

We went home and collapsed.