Saturday we packed up the littles and tackled the very short (<2 km) Mt. Edith Cavell - saw glaciers, heard them calving (though we never saw any actually fall...).  It was a beautiful walk, although very crowded with a ton of different people from all over the world. Tourist season is upon us here, and i think we heard an accent from almost every continent while we walked. 

I also got to test my fake moby wrap for longer hikes.  Actually my oldest used it (he looked like Obi Wan Kenobi!), and said it was just as comfortable or more so than the ergo, so i guess we won't need to buy a second ergo this summer.  I just want to make sure we can hike as much as possible, and if that means carrying three littles this summer (this means my oldest will carry someone part of the way, too - put those big boy muscles to use!)... well, i just want to make sure we have the right tools!  No fun making things harder than they have to be (although that contradicts our family motto which is "We do things the hard way"  :)...

Sunday (today) was a gorgeous laid back day.  Homechurch, with a hymn i found that was from the time period in history we are studying - (thank you, cyberhymnal.org!) -  We have been studying the Mexican/American war this week in history - and did you know that "Once to Every Man and Nation" was written by

James Russell Lowell, and it was printed in  the Bos­ton Cour­i­er, De­cem­ber 11, 1845. Low­ell wrote these words as a po­em pro­test­ing Amer­i­ca’s war with Mex­i­co.

James R. Lowell (1819-1891)

Born: Feb­ru­a­ry 22, 1819, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. Died: Au­gust 12, 1891, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. Buried: Mount Au­burn Cem­e­tery, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts.

James R. Lowell (1819-1891)

A prom­inent po­et and au­thor, Low­ell grad­u­at­ed from Har­vard Coll­ege in 1838, and was ad­mit­ted to the bar in 1840. He be­came Pro­fes­sor of Mo­dern Lan­guag­es and Lit­er­a­ture at Har­vard in 1855, suc­ceed­ing Hen­ry Wads­worth Long­fel­low. He ed­it­ed the Atlantic Monthly (1857-1862) and the North Amer­i­can Review (1863-1872), and served as Amer­i­can min­is­ter to Spain (1877-1880) and am­bas­sa­dor to Eng­land (1880-1885). His works in­clude:

• The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848
• The Biglow Papers, 1848 & 1862
• Among My Books, 1870 & 1876
• Political Essays, 1888

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/o/n/oncetoev.htm

Anyway, i thought that was an interesting connection - it's a kind of mournful sounding hymn, but because of it's lyrics it's been a favourite of mine since i was a little girl...

And then we had a nice big run - we took our big boy with us and left Heavenly in charge of everyone else - My husband was worried that Wy couldn't keep up, but he could have lapped us a few times i think.  I was using my new heart rate monitor and had to keep slowing down (to keep my heart rate in the optimal zone), but the men just soldiered on and then patiently waited for my heart rate to go back down to 150 every time...

After lunch (which T made!), he took all the littles and let me get a little caught up on my scrapbooking - it's been awhile, and i would really like to get Mielle's baby first few months done...  so a nice, relaxing, fun day...