Walking Practice

The days leading up to moving into our real apartment are just crawling by.  Pete put it perfectly: it's like we're "engaged" to the apartment.  We're committed to going through with it, and now we're just waiting around to....well....consummate the marriage.  Pete's also sort of engaged to his job.  The kids are engaged to their school.  We are basically engaged to our real lives.  Being engaged is generally an odd, "tweener" kind of time in life - we thought so, anyway.  Once you're engaged, you really just want to get to the dang day.

After running some errands Wednesday, we found ourselves in our betrothed apartment's neighborhood.  We decided to park the car and walk down toward Pete's office, down the same path Pete and I took on our first day exploring the city on our preview trip - just the opposite direction this time.  Back then we didn't know our final apartment would be only a couple blocks from this path.

We gave the kids a pep talk first, as has become our custom. "Okay, kids.  You are European kids now, remember?  European kids are good walkers.  They walk a long way and don't complain, right?   You might even get a reward at the end if there's no whining.  We are going to have some good walking practice now, okay?  Okay, let's go!"

Walking with kids is inevitably slow, no matter how inspiring the pep talk.  There's always something that stops you every 10 yards.  A bunched up sock.  An itchy leg.  A rock in a shoe.  A rock in the other shoe. A rock in the other kid's shoe.  And so forth.  I mean, it's fine and all to take life slowly and and savor the moment but oh-my-word-get-a-move-on.

So, we walked the path down to the bottom of the canyon.

at the bottom

mom, can I climb this hill?

there they go!

into the Grund area by Pete's betrothed office

into the elevator and back up

looking back down at the path.  still a ways to go to get back...

Was there some limping and whimpering and shoulder-carrying by the end?  Maybe just a little.  We're working on it.