Family Project

At the beginning of the school year, we found out that each family in the grammar school would be doing a "Family Project" in the spring. This is a tradition at our school. The Family Project doesn't really have any guidelines except that it has to be finished in time for Grandparent's Day (April 30), and you're supposed to do something together as a family. Figuring out what we were going to do gave us a touch of anxiety leading up to Grandparent's Day, but after we settled on what our project was going to be it became a huge blessing for our family.

We chose hiking as our family project. This is something that Mat and I have always enjoyed doing together, and we've tried to instill a love of hiking in the boys too. We decided this would be a great project because we could learn about nature, enjoy the spring weather, spend quiet time together as a family, invite friends to join us, learn about reading and following maps, get exercise, and explore this awesome place where we live.

So here is an abbreviated version of our Hames Family Hiking scrapbook.


Our first hike was Pedernales Falls. What a beautiful day! For each hike we wrote the name, the date, what the weather was like, who was with us, and what we observed along the way like animals, plants, bugs, etc.







The next hike we did was the Greenbelt, just me and the boys.



Next, we went to Turkey Creek with the Heaths. This was so fun because we got to keep crossing the creek over and over. The boys wore their swimsuits and splashed around a lot. At 2.5 miles, it was the longest hike we did for the project.









Next we hiked the trail at Circle C Park with our cousins Ben and Megan.





We loved hiking through Longhorn Cavern. It was really hard to choose the pictures because it was such a cool place.











We went to the Hollows and hiked one of the trails there with Granddad and Gammo. This hike starts out with a tram ride down the hill.







A favorite hike of mine was Wild Basin. This is another one that I did with the boys by myself. The trail was marked really well and matched up with the maps we were carrying. There's a beautiful waterfall and lots of pretty dragonflies.












Next was Reimers Ranch. We needed more time to explore this place which was a combination cavern, trail, and river. We'll definitely go back someday.







And finally, we went on an urban hike for Jackson's field trip to the Zilker Botanical Garden. We threw in a little art on this one because the kids stopped several times to do some plein air drawing. We included his artwork in the scrapbook.









We also included a poem that we wrote in the scrapbook and a lot of quotes about spending time outside.



Jackson was very proud of his book and loved showing it off to everyone at school on Grandparent's Day. We saw lots of great projects...everything from service projects to planting gardens to building giant Lego creations to blasting off rockets and science experiments to genealogies to sewing and baking. It was so fun seeing all the projects and imagining all the good times the families had doing them. So the anxiety is gone...we're looking forward to next's year Family Project!