Its Spring!

bikes! boys! Spring fever! Spring has sprung! Easter! Sunshine! Gardens and landscaping!
We've had lots of 50 degree days now, which is all good news as far as we are concerned at this point (I'm totally playing ignoramus to the elephant in the room called global warming). Its time to get ready for summer.

First on the agenda, get Owen back on his bike! Both boys are riding on two wheels. Collin is confident and excited to ride all over town. Owen learned how to ride last summer and was doing really well, until toward the end of the summer he took a spill at the park when a lady nearly pushed him off his bike (an adult, who was very very concerned about her own wellbeing, so much she'd push a kiddo off his bike even after he says "passing!" and carefully almost maneuvers around her. Ugh). Anyway, he wasn't happy about it and even though he rode home that day and rode a few more times that summer, this spring he was NOT feelin' his bike. At all. We tried everything. Praise, social pressure, bribing, reinforcement, you name it, we were trying it.

His reluctance was strong. He did NOT want to ride. We really wanted to get him back on the bike though, so we persisted and I'm happy to report a few weeks later he's asking to go on bike rides! It took a lot of Drew running along side him, and lots of praise, but he finally got the hang of it again and was off on two wheels.

We're working on the confidence part, and I don't forsee the overpass hill in his immediate future, but baby steps toward riding are good so when we head out for our first camping trip, he'll be read to roll.

Snuggled in all those attempts was Easter weekend. We celebrated with brunch at Axel's as we typically do, and, no church. Thats right. We didn't go to church. I'm not certain where we are with the religion business, but neither one of us clearly is feeling like we need to be in a pew each Sunday morning at this point to be spiritually connected to God. Maybe that will change in the future, but for now we're happy with it. Easter was a mostly of the pagan variety for us- eggs, rabbits, etc. 

We did have a blast coloring eggs and on Easter morning the boys were super excited to find eggs and use the clues the Easter Bunny left to find their baskets.