Bike Park

Michael has been out of town for a few days, dominating his ordination exams. When he is out of the house, two things happen without fail: I cannot sleep, and I have no motivation to cook. The kids are perfectly happy to eat apples and peanut butter or ants on a log or veggies and hummus or leftover cold turkey and cheese or any other number of mostly raw, snacky type foods all day long, so why bother with anything else? And when I don't cook, it frees up quite a few evening hours. So after school and errands were done today, I asked the kids if they wanted to have a picnic dinner in the park. They couldn't say yes fast (or loud) enough, so we packed pretty much all of the aforementioned snacks into the stroller and headed out into the afternoon sunshine.

Gussie just recently grew tall enough to practice on and start to enjoy the balance bike. He can scoot along pretty quickly now, and today was the first time he rode to the park with the big kids. Actually, he rode all the way there, rode around the paths and fountains while we were there instead of playing on the playground, then rode almost all the way home; he tuckered out about two blocks away.

The park is truly stunning right now with all the blooming trees.

Even though the weather no longer necessitates snow boots, Gussie still chooses to wear them most days because 1) he can easily get them on by himself and 2) they give him an extra quarter inch or so above other shoes which is good because he is still just *barely* tall enough for the balance bike.

Watch out for the neighborhood bike gang...

Since all of the big kids rode bikes and Edie prefers to be wrapped and carried than ride in the stroller (ok, she pretty much hates the stroller), I ended up following four kids on bikes with a baby wrapped on me, pushing an empty stroller. I got a few curious looks. Actually it wasn't empty at all, just empty of kids. Taking dinner for those four kids requires several cubic feet, plus the girls wanted to bring their roller blades, plus a diaper bag... yeah, the stroller was necessary even without kids in it.

We stopped before we got to the playgrounds for our picnic dinner.

After a lot of spinning and climbing on the playground, the girls put on their roller blades and joined Michael and Gussie in the Wheeled World.

Have I told you about the roller blades? Grandma got a pair for Mary but couldn't find any in Catherine's size. Catherine tried in vain to be comfortable in Mary's, which adjust up to one size too small for Catherine. Our delightful neighbor noticed the girls attempting to share roller blades on the sidewalk out front, and asked Catherine if she would like to try hers. They are a little too big, which it turns out is much better than a little too small, so our neighbor told Catherine to use them as often as she wanted, and that she should even go ahead and keep them at our house and our neighbor would still know where to find them if she needed them.

After each of the girls had their own pair of roller blades, "blading" immediately became their new favorite activity. They both have multiple rubs, blisters, and scrapes on their feet, toes, and ankles from suddenly subjecting their feet to several hours of skating each day, but they don't care. And they're improving remarkably quickly!

The kids all declared it the most fun dinner picnic ever.

We didn't leave the park until seven, which means we didn't get home until 7:30, and of course everyone was hungry again and also much too dirty to go straight to bed. But even though they were still all worked up when we got home, it only took a few minutes of heads on pillows to bring on the pleasant sleep that comes from a long day of physical activity.

Apparently (and thankfully) they don't share my neurosis about sleeping when Daddy isn't home.