My head began spinning and within a minute I was salivating at the thought of being a "climbing family." Now, I hadn't gone climbing since my freshman year of college and before then practically never. But I had an epiphany that this is what we could do, something the whole family could love doing together.
Such strokes of excitement catch me from time to time. Like when you go to a friends house for games or a movie and you end up imagining this wonderful cruise trip that you all agree to plan for and save up for, yet is never discussed again. I can't imagine I'm the only one with these flights of fancy.
But this one, well, it's stuck. Heidi and I went on our date -- an intro to belay class, so we could be responsible enough to trust each other's life on a rope. We had a great time.
The flight of fancy intensified.

We determined we could bring the girls with us and go often, reasoning that a membership could make sense. We bought a set of passes as a way to test the water.
We brought the girls and it worked.
Now sometimes they climb,
Sometimes they sit.
But we're doing this. We're a few months in now and we're going as a family at least once per week, I'm going a couple more times per week. And we're loving it.
Turns out Evette's really good! All of the easier runs at our gym have bells at the top, which she loves to ring. It's going to be hard convincing her to transition to other runs...
Miriam doesn't weigh enough to use the belay system yet, so we've come up with an alternative: Climb high enough to "Sit on Daddy head!!", which is then followed by shrieks of laughter.
I've even taken the scouts with me once now, and I hope to do that again.
The tongue helps, right?
Come climb with us!


















































