4th of July

The cousins invited us down for the Fourth of July so we headed down Tuesday the 3rd, watched their swim meet, stayed up too late and woke up bright and early (sort of) for their neighborhood's parade, followed by swim party.

(flipped the picture so the tattoo was correct)

We all got super sunburned after close to 5 or 6 hours at the pool.

We came home, showered, ate dinner and headed to Ray's for custards and shaved ices.

 Guess who got a shaved ice - blue raspberry.

Then a minor league baseball game where we watched the Flying Squirrels play the Mets.

It was SUPER hot and we were all tired and sunburned.

But it was worth it for the fireworks after the game.

Cub Scout Bike Rodeo

On June 7th Buddy's Cub Scout pack had a bike rodeo.  Luckily Buddy and Princess Sparkley just perfected riding their bikes without training wheels.  Little Guy had a lot of fun as well.  PS is in the purple shirt in the back of the bottom left picture. 

Princess Sparkley Learns to Ride a Bike

Princess Sparkley, Buddy and Little Guy all have a goal this year to learn to ride their bikes.  B started with PS on a grassy slope (I have video on my phone, but can't figure out how to get it off yet) and worked up to our sidewalk out front.  Here she is, doing great.  And don't worry, she crashes into a car tire at the end of the video, not the car.  She needs to work on braking, especially in instances like this when her chain comes off.  Next up, Buddy...

Scootering

Monday it snowed.  Today's high was near 60 so I got out the bikes and scooter and let the kids play out front.  The bikes had flat tires, so while I pumped them up, Princess Sparkley helped Little Guy figure out how to ride a scooter, then she filmed him.

Stream

Another bike ride, but this time the dry stream bed had water in it and B, the little 3 1/2 year old son of our friends LOVES puddles so we spent a lot of time in the stream.

Bike Trail

We found a fun bike/walk trail in town and invited some friends to join us on our first adventure on it.

 Buddy and Little Guy were on bikes and Princess Sparkley was on her scooter.  It was a great trail with ponds and playgrounds every once in awhile to give us a break from bike riding.

And we saw some geese and goslings as well as a great blue heron (bottom left corner picture). 

1.64 miles

Summer Bike Riding

These videos were taken on my cell phone camera, so they aren't fabulous. One of the kids' goals for the year was learning to ride their bikes. I meant for B to bring Little Guy's tricycle with us to the school parking lot, he thought I meant the little bike with training wheels that used to be Buddy's. Little Guy LOVED this mistake. And amazingly, he can pedal it.

Baby X rides his bike

Baby X just figured out how to pedal his tricycle this week. He pedals it across the kitchen floor and then yells "[Baby X's] ride bike!!" But we couldn't ever get him to really do it on camera.

Bike Ride

We've had some warmer weather, so last Monday (1/18) on Martin Luther King Day, we took the kids to the school where PS has Girl Scout meetings and they tried out their bikes. PS's doesn't have training wheels because we can't find any that will work with her bike, so she's having to learn without. I kept giving Buddy crazy directions for where he had to go and when he had to brake so he'd stop frantically putting his feet on the ground to stop. Baby X kicked a soccer ball around with me.







Then I taught them how to do flips on the playground bars.










Buddy got the hang of flipping his body around right away. PS hung upside down for a lot of the time. When she finally figured out how to twirl around, she had me film it.

The boys get to work

The kids got bikes for Christmas. PS's was new, but Buddy's was used and required some work (adding training wheels, cleaning the chain, etc.). Buddy and Baby X were both happy to grab screwdrivers and help Daddy.