Olivia learns to ride a bike

Olivia is surprising.  There are some things that she just figures out without much help.  I remember when I came home one day, Mollie told me that she had learned to swing on her own. The only help she needed was an explanation of "pump your legs."  She got it from that.

She has had a bike that without training wheels and without pedals for a while.  Actually she left this bike behind the van.  So one day I backed over it and broke the front crank.  Because it could not keep the chain on, I took the pedals off.  Olivia would cruise on this bike, half running half gliding.  Using that bike probably really prepared her for balance and other needs of a two wheel normal bicycle.

After the effort that it was to get our boys comfortable on their bikes, I was wondering how much effort it would be to teach Olivia. Saturday morning, she asked me to take the training wheels off her bike.  Just a few days earlier Mollie had suggested that she try to ride without training wheels and Olivia defiantly said "maybe when I'm five." However, today she was ready.

I don't know if I gave her any explanation, but the video below is her first attempt.

New Bike

Last weekend Mollie got Olivia a new bike at a garage sale ($1 special!).  When she got home, Olivia immediately fell in love.  We got some training wheels put on (borrowed from one of the boy's bikes) and she spent all day on the bike.  On Sunday she woke up and wanted to ride the bike.

 I figured that by leaving the garage door shut she would be sufficiently deterred.  I guess not.

Springtime Saturday

We had a really great Saturday yesterday.  It was the perfect combination of fun and work, almost all out doors, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect.  Well, maybe a little less wind would have been more perfect, but we are coming to expect wind is pretty  much the norm here.

We started off the day doing some outdoor clean up at our church building.  The kids really had a great time scouting out trash and weeds, and getting them all in trash bags.  Then we were off to Kid's Fishing Day at Columbia Park Fishing Pond.  Every year they set up a day where you can pay a nominal fee, and the provide you will a reel, rod and bait (and a cool t-shirt to wear) and stock the pond.  You then have about an hour to try and catch some fish.  Harrison really enjoyed this, and learned to cast a fishing line.

Noah reeled his line in a few times, but mostly watched Sam and I attempt to fish.

And Olivia was a happy observer the whole time, kept occupied with a few snacks.

It felt good to be part of a real community building activity.  There were TONS of people out, and we even ran into some friends while we were there. We didn't catch anything, but part of me was glad - dealing with the hook out of the fish, cleaning the fish and eating the fish are my least favorite parts of fishing.  I do have great childhood memories of fishing (probably has something to do with the fact that my dad took care of all of my least favorite parts) so I was glad we could go do this with the kids.  And now the boys each have their own reel and rod, and we can take those to Utah this summer to do some more fishing with grandpa. Where he can take care of all those parts if we do catch anything :)

Next we headed off to Harrison's soccer thing.  It's not really a team.  They just learn some skills, and then do some scrimmaging.  I am afraid I'm not much of a soccer mom.  I'm glad to have my kids participate if they want to, but part of me just doesn't get the soccer mom thing.  And having both the boys involved in soccer this spring has really gobbled up some family time. I guess we'll see where we go with it.

Next we came home do do some of our own yard work.  We have been removing all the rock they put in when they did the landscaping (before we bought our home) and replacing it with bark.  I want to have flowers in my yard - which don't really grow well in rock, so we took the leap to replace it all.  I guess we'll find out if it does in fact all blow away in the winter, as a few of our neighbors have warned us.  But I think I'd rather have my flowers in the spring and summer, and replace the bark each year, than have planting beds full of rock.  With the help of  a faithful home-teacher's truck, we got a load of bark from a local nursery, and did some planting, and filled it all in.  I love how it's looking.  I just need to plant some more annuals.  We've got some perennials that are done, and some new ones just breaking through.  We also planted some water melon in the square patch in front of our porch, so we'll see how that goes.  We put some strawberries in the lowest area of the terracing, and think we'll add some tomato plants there.  Eventually we'll want to put a garden area in the back, but with so much great full sun in the front yard (we have a south facing house) we're doing some planing out there this year.  We almost splurged and got a dogwood tree to plant in the front yard, but after a little research, we were worried it wouldn't thrive in the heat of the front yard, where we would want to put it.  But we did put a couple lilacs in the terracing nearest to the house. And that's a weeping flowering cherry we added about a month ago, up in the top area next to the porch. Here's what it looks like now: 

And here's some before and after's of the front yard.  I don't know how much you can see from these pictures - the before was taken when we did our first showing of the house - before we even knew we'd be buying it someday!

Before - taken Sept. 21st, 2010

After - taken today about 7:30.  I don't know if you can see the difference in the landscaping - rock vs. bark, but we like it so much better with the bark. 

After that was all done, Noah decided it was time for him to learn how to ride his bike without training wheels.  He had a friend over earlier in the week, who had requested the training wheels be taken off (he was already riding a 2-wheeler at home) and so I took them off.  Noah was very anxious to catch up to his friend, and so we just went for it.  We decided it was time for Harrison to learn too, and after seeing Noah ride a couple of time without training wheels, he decided he was ready to try to.  Here's some videos of both of them riding their bikes:

Olivia also wanted us to take a video of her riding: