Keeping It Light With the Little Backbreakers

So my last entry I talked about a lot of the things that Mama Bear and I have learned about with backpacking with kids.  This will be a post about one specific area...ultralight backpacking.
Prior to the existence of the little backbreakers, my wife and I were always attempting to lower our pack weight.  This was actually an academic exercise since we did not really having enough time to backpack.  We were, however, able to make the occasional excursion.

Mostly, we read a lot about backpacking, made long excel spreadsheets to weigh our gear and dream.
Now, it is time!  We live in one of the best places in the world to backpack and we finally have made the time to make it happen.
With kids, the gear added to one's pack can get heavy.   There are some redundancies, but the kids' sleeping bags, bigger tent, more clothes and more food is really the heavy stuff.
To break it down, we went from a tarp tent weighing in at just over 20 ounces to a four man tent at 5lbs 15 ounces.  The Big Agnes UL4 is what we use and it has worked great.

The kids sleeping bags are not the uber light weight ones that we have.  Both of our bags are right around 2 lbs.  The kids bags are kids bags, cheap and heavy at 3lbs each.  Plus pads, plus pillows.
Those are the really big items, but the way I am looking at it is that we are training our future Sherpas.  Within a few years, I expect they will carry more of their own gear, and then more of MY gear:)