Hitting The CCT Accotink Creek Trail

Now that boys have bikes with gears I figured it was time for a trail. I found an access point to the cross county trail about 5 minutes from our house that we could ride to via local roads.

We had a great time. About 2 hour round trip with some breaks mixed in.

Movies From Another Cold Spring day

Little League game was cancelled today due to a wet field. Maybe for the best since Jacob has a fever and will be in again tomorrow. So what is there today...
DANCE!!


Later faith and Reuben went outside to play all bundled up. Faith is really becoming a good bike rider. A new bike is in her future as a 7 year old.

Afterwards, Faith and I ride our bikes to and from the park.

Nice September Day

Packed up the tent this morning (got it all to fit in original bag). Then we had some friends over; first Susan and then Ken and Amanda joined us. Spent most of the day outside in the yard or in the front court. Even got Jacob riding his bike...

He likes to go fast making sharp turns nearly missing parked cars (not always nearly missing).
Meanwhile, Reuben is meeting the challenge of "The Hill"...

Faith's Got A New Bike

Faith is finally graduating from her itsy bitsy bike. Now she's got a 16 incher with an attached 4 incher for Barbie :-)



What she doesn't know is that I'm going to start raising her training wheels little by little to hopefully wean her off them by the time she graduates High School.

Spring Fever

We enjoyed a fun afternoon outside, first cleaning up the backyard and doing some yard work and then playing with kids out in the court.

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. I have been very busy working a proposal at the office... and its not going to well! We'll see in a month.

Springtime !?!

No jackets, sun shining, bikes out, steaks on the grill... must be February!

Well the steaks had to settle for the broiler as I was out of propane.

Training Wheels Banished

We took another practice run at bike riding without training wheels. Overall pretty good results, but still at about a 10 second ride max before stopping. This time Reuben too got into the action.





Later in the day the kids played 3 holes of Wii golf. Reuben loves it, but all their games still have much to be desired. After 3 holes they finished +11, +14, and +17 (Reuben, Jacob, Faith). They need a lot of work on their short game!

Week In Review

Just some of the random pictures this week...



And a quick movie of dare devil Reuben. Its about as dare devilish as he gets ;-)

Kicking Off 2008

This morning I took the kids to the park. It was a beautiful day with a little bit of wind. Time to finally give in to the kids' pleas on flying a kite. We had a bit of luck, but the wind was gusty; changing from nothing to a big gust and then back to nothing in a matter of seconds. We had our moments and for our first foray we did OK. The kids had fun and want to do it again.


The most excitement at the park was peeing against a tree. We walked to our local park and were there for awhile when nature called. However, the port-a-john that's usually there was gone; must be gone for the winter. So what to do? When I mentioned the idea of peeing against tree, Jacob couldn't drop his pants fast enough ;-) Faith on the other hand, I couldn't convince to squat down on the grass. I'm not really sure how that would've worked for anyway; I can see why many girls aren't big campers. So I called in the reserves and Karen came by in the mini-van to pick Faith up for a real potty break.

Later in the day, our friends Ken and Karen and their daughter Amanda came over to play. This was a bike riding event!! when it got too cold it was inside for the Smart Cycle.




They wound up staying for dinner and watching last night's ball drop with us. A real nice visit all around.

Its About Time

Faith finally is starting to ride a tricycle!!! Took a lot of encouragement, but finally she is willing and now able to ride. See for yourself...

Modified Biathlon

We had a little break of the heat today; it was only 94. So, Karen took Faith on some errands while the boys rode their bikes before I took them to swim class. This was the first time Reuben was back on his bike after I fixed his brakes. Not sure how long this was going on, but the last time he was riding the bike he really hated it and seemed to have a lot of trouble. When I was putting the bike away I noticed it was hard to push. Turned out the front brake was making contact with the wheel and causing a lot of excess friction. So today was Reuben's first day back on a working bike. He was much better!!
	I was playing around with the manual settings of my camera and toward the end I started to get some that worked (the one above is with the “good” setting). Besides the slow shutter speed, I needed to adjust the exposure setting to +0.7. The max manual aperture setting is only f 8.0 (which is what I used), but the picture properties for the one above says f 11.4. Not sure what is digitally happening.
Then it was quickly off to swim class. Its been awhile since I went with them and I have seen a lot of improvement. They are now able to use a dumbbell float under their arms and kick around the pool.
Their instructor is very good getting the kids to really listen. The boys are also starting to relax when floating (assisted) on their backs. Though, as soon she let go of them they both quickly sunk.
If you couldn't tell by the goggles, this is Jacob.	And naturally blue goggles for Reuben.
The instructor's real motivating trick is that if the kids are good they get to jump off the side of the pool at the end. They get 5 jumps and she takes one away for each “incident”. Today everyone got all their jumps. That's Reuben flying. Every jump of his he made me and the instructor laugh. He was doing great belly flops. He's ready for a Spring Break contest.Jacob was a bit more kamikaze!

Birthday Bikes

Yesterday, I picked up the boys bikes. Toys R Us assembled the bikes for $10 each. Probably, the best $10 I've ever spent. Then, I made space in the shed by getting rid of some really toys. The boys were really excited, so we couldn't fairly wait until their birthday. Karen said earlier in the day they sat in the shed on their new bikes for 5 minutes. It must have been 100 degrees in the shed today! So, I can home early we gave the boys the bikes. They loved them.
They were all off and riding in seconds flat. Reuben is working on braking.	Jacob, meanwhile, has already learned to skid brake on all the sand in the street.
Reuben even SMILED !!!
Faith and Karen were watching the boys and watering some newly planted flowers and bulbs. While we were outside, Faith and I also played catch with a basketball. Even though she doesn't like to ride her tricycle, she does love to play ball and is the best ball thrower in the house.

Another Bike Day In December

Movie from yesterday. The boys have a cough, but it was too nice to stay inside.