In 2022 we spent 740 hours outdoors out of a goal of 1000. We still declared that a success. We counted time spent outside individually, with friends and as a family. We included school recess time, outside chores like mowing lawn and blowing and shoveling snow, tending to the garden; physical activity like runs, walks, hikes, soccer, golf, tennis, ping pong, swimming, surfing, wake surfing, bike riding, skiing, knee boarding, snow and water tubing, sledding; fun times like adventures with scavenger hunts, climbing trees, four wheeling, fishing, hunting, horseback riding and visiting the beach.
Brynn biked to her friend Brooklyn’s house every day while it was still nice outside and then they walked to school together. She learned how to to kneeboard and went ziplining and went on countless evening walks with me. Clara learned how to ride her bike without training wheels and tried three different new outdoor sports. I did ‘regular’ surfing and wake surfing for the first time. Dana planted the garden again with Clara and helped coached her soccer team.
I first learned of the 1000 hours outside challenge at the beginning of last year and started tracking how much time we spent outside. I love tracking things, so it was fun to see how many minutes and hours we racked up throughout the year. It was a great motivator at times when the kids didn’t feel like going outside – knowing we could log some time to add to our goal. We found ourselves being more intentional with trying to spend more time outside as well.
We decided to track again this year and we’re looking forward to see what our total will be for 2023.
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