12 Family Adventures. March – Sunrise Breakfast
I fear this might be the most misleading title for a blog post ever written. I am slightly delayed with my write ups for #12familyadventures but we have still been having our mini family adventure every month, you can see what’s in store for the next few months below and we’d love it if you joined us. We did have our ‘sunrise breakfast’, which was our plan for March although it was a little more damp, cloudrise than a sunrise breakfast! So apologies for the slightly gloomy photos!
A different kind of Mother’s Day
We left our ‘March Family Adventure’ to the last Sunday in March which happened to coincide with Mother’s Day and it was also the day the clocks went back. Obviously, with it being Mother’s Day – I could have had a lie-in in the bag so it seemed a bit ridiculous to be asking the entire family to get up at 5.30am (after already losing an hour) to go and watch the sunrise. But then I knew if we didn’t do it within March – our whole family adventure monthly thing would be hard to get back on track. I figured that I could have a lie-in any other weekend (as long as my two year old Archie also bought into the plan!)
I was close to missing out March, the thought of losing sleep seemed to be too much to ask for in the spirit of adventure. But then I remembered why we wanted to start #12familyadventures anyway. Their childhood seems to be disappearing at a snap of my fingers – I don’t want their growing up days to disappear amongst all the hurrying around, the mundane cleaning and the ordinary days. The ordinary days are always very much needed but I also wanted to try and have more ‘special memory moments’ too and that’s why #12familyadventures was created – to insert ‘the fun and the adventure’ into the ‘everyday’ and do more things outdoors that replace screens and phones – even for a short time.
So, we decided to forego sleep and got up early – it did feel crazy to wake up our kids when normally they are waking us up! We had packed some sausage sandwiches the night before and off we went! Before we had even left the house – our two year old was moaning. He wasn’t happy about the rude awakening and didn’t want to get dressed – so we decided to take him in his pyjamas! It already didn’t seem to be shaping up to the best family adventure idea we’d ever had. We took a short drive to climb a hill near us to see the sunrise in all it’s glory.
Unfortunately, we had failed to check the weather report and when we left it was grey and gloomy. When we arrived at the top of the hill – we swiftly realised that we weren’t going to be seeing a sunrise as it was behind cloud. Well, for some reason I had always thought you saw the sunrise. I don’t know why it didn’t cross my mind that this was cloud dependent. You learn something new every day! We were all a bit disappointed and wondering why we were up at the crack of dawn in the freezing weather!
But, as we were up and out anyway, we decided to have a little wander and tucked into our sandwiches despite it being a tad chilly. I must admit, sitting on a damp bench shivering wasn’t quite what I had in mind when we had planned a sunrise breakfast – I thought it might be a bit more magical and warmer! Perhaps this one might have been best set for a Summer’s morning. But once we’d had our picnic and a walk we warmed up to being in the woods before anyone else – it was quite fun to have it all to ourselves with nothing but a woodpecker in sight! We had a little giggle at what a crazy idea this had been on a damp morning when we could have been tucked up in our beds! There was still something quite fun and unique about being the only ones in the woods – it’s a rarity in London to ever be on your own so it felt special in it’s own kind of way. We even found time to add a bit to our Nature Journals on a damp log! Finlay was quite keen to try and draw the woodpecker we could hear.
As we strolled back to the car – I felt thankful that we experienced a different kind of Sunday, even if it wasn’t the idea that was in our minds originally. I also was really thankful for all my kids – Archie was a keen on walking in the cold so the kids had taken turns cajoling him and giving him piggy backs. That was the best Mother’s Day present to watch! It wasn’t the adventure planned but it was an adventure all the same! And certainly a Mother’s Day that we’ll remember for a while!
You can find our other #12familyadventures here:
And here’s the other adventures planned, if you’d like to join in!
