Two-wheeling

Yes, we have two wheeled bike riders! Pete and I were feeling totally inadequate as parents, having not taught our kids how to ride their bikes yet. We live on a very steep hill and so it takes a trip up the hill to the school parking lot to get some space to ride flat.

It's not that we haven't taken them on their bikes at all, but it was pretty rare that we wanted to go and the kids wanted to try at the same time.

But this summer I was determined to get them up on a bike. Plus, I learned the secret--teach them how to keep from falling. [Brilliant!] I was advised to teach them the V, which Kate and Zack decided was more like an A. Basically sticking their feet out at the same time so that however the bike fell their feet should hit the ground first.

Previously, I'd been trying to teach them how to ride. Now, at my parents, on a bike that was just a bit too small, I taught them what to do if they started to fall. Once they got this down (in about 15 minutes) they were more than happy to pop on the bike and go!

Since then, Pete has been taking them up to the school and riding around with them. Now I need to get a bike so we can go on some of the bike paths.

In other news we've been taking it pretty easy for the summer days. It was super hot for a couple of weeks. We've hit some free movies at a local theatre, caught the ooky exhibit and the DAR and found that it was a very interesting museum all around, took in some library programs, spent a day in Baltimore at the aquarium and science museum, shopped at the farmers market and Katie started up piano lessons again. We went to pools with friends and also got to see our cousins from Africa and friends in from Australia.

Still to come, we need to use our Hershey Park tickets. Then there's the VAHomeschoolers Conference in a few weeks, off to a last visit with Gma and Gpa and that's the summer!

Fall is beginning to take shape:
Katie shocked us by saying that she wants to take a year off from ballet this year! I was stunned and also happy that I didn't buy her new dance shoes at the end of last season. I told her she has to have a sport and she's decided to try Tae Kwon Do along with Zack. Yay--one less place to drive.

So, that will be Tae KD probably on Tues and Thurs, Piano on Wed, and our regular Friday group, plus we have to work field trips in (Tuesday class is going to conflict with those, so not sure what we'll do about that yet).

Zack has decided to play the drums but wants to do it himself for now. We're going to let him alone about it and just set up the drums downstairs as soon as he clears a space in the mess down there. We learned from the piano lessons experience that it's best to have him play around on his own. He barely touches the piano anymore, just wasn't interested in having to learn specifics yet.

I've already dropped out of one field trip group and am hoping to limit the amount of running around we're doing but it's definitely a challenge.

Ofcourse, as I dropped one group, I picked up another group. REACH is run out of the Fredericksburg area, but the woman who runs it gets amazing discounts and group rates all over VA. We're heading to Williamsburg in September and if that's the only thing we do with them, we will have saved more than we spent to join the group.

So, the challenge again will be balancing the structure I need to get things done around here, like laundry and gardening and the unstructured time for discovery that we love so much and time for friends, time for family and time time time. :-)

For now, we will enjoy the last lazy days of summer.