Photo Friday and 1000 Hours Outside

Fridays are my days of blogging. As opposed to information sharing and place reviews. Earlier this week I was clued into the “1000 hours outside” challenge by Pandora Island a friend and fellow Irish woman living in Japan. Our #1000hoursoutside challenge review will fit in nicely with “photo Friday” for my day of blogging. And so…

The 1000 Hours Outside Challenge

I am new to this challenge, but from what I can tell it was started by Ginny Yurich and her family of seven. As the name suggests: its quite simply a challenge to spend 1000 hours or more outside this year. You can read more about the challenge and pick up some really useful resources on Ginny’s website.

I reckon we probably do spend a 1000 hours outside annually, but looks like I’ll find out for sure in 2020! I am really looking forward to being an active member in the community and am embracing the concept and the challenge. I hope that on days when I feel like bumming out and spending a day at home, this will be an added incentive to just get up and go.

42/1000 Hours

We’re off to a good start at least and well on our way to the first 100. From January 1st to January 9th the kids and I spent approximately 42 hours outside. Sometimes that was just out in our garden or on the street, but we also went to the woods, parks, shrines and other outdoor locations.

My kids are aged between five and ten years old and they really love the great outdoors. However, my eldest, Mr Ten and recently my oldest daughter Ms Nine too, also love screen time. Sometimes they need a bit of coaxing to put down the Switch and go outside. But always – once they’re out there, they enjoy every second of it.

I’m sorry I didn’t take a reference to which blog this was on, but while reading other people’s accounts of the challenge one Mom’s comment really resonated with me. She wrote something along the lines of “you don’t see smiles like this when they’re gaming”. I couldn’t agree more. My kids smiles are their most brilliant when they are playing outside. (If the person responsible reads this, please let me know and I’ll add a link to your blog).

The week in photos

Week two of January 2020 was another busy week. The photos above are all from this past week and here are just a few more, my faves, from the week Saturday January 4th to Friday 10th:

This is my favourite photo from this past week. My five year old and seven year old, on the left, climbing in the new Saiboku No Mori in Hidaka City.

Another fave from the past week: with some of my favourite people in the whole world. Grateful everyday for the great friends I have in my life both here in Japan and back home in Ireland and around the world.

The last one for this week. Now that the kids are back to school we won’t be able to keep up the pace of outdoor time that we had for the first week of 2020. But we will try to get outdoors as much as possible. I love this challenge, because I believe in it. Here’s to 1000 hours outside in 2020.