As you may know, we love to hike in the winter! We spend as many days hiking as possible between late Nov and early March!

Chris had to spend an entire Saturday at SLU so I let the kids grab a friend and we took off to a more local park in St. Charles – Broemmelsiek Park.

Here are the MAIN reasons I love hiking in the winter…..

The fallen trees. In winter you can see deep into the forest and my kids need to take hiking breaks to climb/jump/explore or they lose interest quick. So literally EVERY TIME we pass a fallen log I challenge them in some way. Above – they are playing chicken with their friends b/c the log wasn’t too high off the ground.

I also stop them as often as I can to look at interesting things in the forest – soft moss or like this mushroom/thing/whoknows that grew around the sticks from another bush. We paused – they looked and felt it (it was really hard) and we talked about what it could be. I’m not sure educated on random stuff like this so lots of times we just chat about it – other times we might google it when we get back to the car. Pausing to investigate helps to remind them to look around and not just always ahead.

This time I challenged them to “do a trick” and Lily for sure won that little competition!

We all tested the vines to see who could climb or swing or just hold on the longest!

99% of the time we hike as a family but the few times I let them bring friends is so special!

We thought this little area needed a fort so we took about 30 minutes and started to build one – the kids had a blast and maybe the next group of kids to come along will add to it!