Yesterday, Saturday June 13, was Family Health and Fitness Day. A day to celebrate, and get families out and get active, and engage in fun activities. Whether playing games, walking, riding bikes, whatever…just get moving. Even though we may have a day designated to promote this, there is no reason every day should not be Family Health and Fitness Day. It always has been a part of our lives. We instilled into our kids the importance of being active, and exercising. They learned very young!
We would go for bike rides together starting many years ago. And, we all wore helmets! We went for picnics, riding to get to the park. They learned from the start how important it was to be active.
Many of our vacations centered around being active as well. Here we are taking a break as we were hiking up, what was then called, Harney Peak. We would stay in cabins in Hill City, and go off on the Mickelson Trail, and go hiking to Harney Peak, or the one year we did the Volksmarch to Crazy Horse. We had a blast on those vacations! Everybody had a good time. We explored, saw new things, but had to work to get them done too.
All of this early training translated later to being active in school as well. This was true not only for High School, but College as well. Here we were at one of Nicks Augustana track meets.
We have had several great trips to Disney, and each time ran races while we were there. I have done the Goofy and the Dopey races, and here Molly and Megan ran with us to do their first Half Marathon. Nick could not get off school this year, but Carissa and Noah Hauck ran first time events here as well. Noah the Half Marathon with us, and Carissa the marathon with me. The memories these time bring back! We had a ball!
The kids grew up watching us run all of the time. It was only natural that they would follow the same foot steps. Running is what brought Sarah and I together when we first began to date. We have not stopped since then. We still plan vacations with running events, or other active adventures in mind.
Last year we all got together and ran the Hump Day 5k event as well. We are all getting older, but those times when we still do things like this together are still something very special. I hope there are a lot more times like this as well.
The kids are no exception. All of the dogs we have had have been active runners, walkers with us. Dakota is no exception. She goes with us everyday, either walking, running, or both. If you are going to be a part of Team Reif, you better be able to move. When the times comes when we may not be able to run, we will just have to figure out how else we can be active. Be creative. Have fun with it. Your health depends on it. You truly do need to Strive to Survive. But, nobody said those days could not be incredibly fun along the way! Enjoy life to the fullest. Stay active! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day on New Streak: #441
