Biker Boys

After all the cold and snowstorms, Richmond is finally experiencing a taste of spring. The warmer temperatures this week have led to a lot of outdoor fun. Today, one of the outdoor activities was working with Brennan on learning to ride his bike.

Now, Brennan has had a balance bike for a couple of years, but never really showed any inclination to use pedals. When he finally truly outgrew the balance bike, we began to nudge him (a little not so gently) to use a real bike that we had been gifted. He had started to get the hang of things last fall, but then the advent of winter put the kibosh on more bike learning. Today's amazing spring-like weather was the perfect opportunity to start the "year of the bike" for Brennan. We headed down to a nearby church parking lot with a slight downhill slope. After a few false starts, he finally found some motivation and really took off. It was with great excitement that we watched him take off on his bike. He's getting the hang of it, and we are really proud of his tremendous progress.

Owen has now been bequeathed the balance bike and he really enjoyed starting to learn how to manage this wheels upgrade. One small tumble didn't deter him, but it did become something that he talked about a good bit for the rest of the day!

He has a blanket that he has been attached to for a long time. The blanket has now been designated the official cape of Owen. He wears it. A. Lot. Over time, strips of it have been torn off. He loves to wear them around his head and call them a hat. So, yes, in the above photo, he's wearing a strip of blanket tied around his head...

Back

Apologies for what turned out to be a rather lengthy blog break. January was a rough month. I dealt with two separate cold viruses back-to-back, one of which lasted more that two weeks. Six snow days, three late starts to school, and crazy cold weather for here took a toll. As someone who absolutely thrives on routine, I was glad to see January go. But...here I sit, with a winter wonderland outside, on our seventh snow day in just four weeks (with day eight likely to follow tomorrow).

Our earlier snows didn't amount to much and weren't really conducive to playing in for long periods of time. But this snow is nice and heavy. Great snowman (and snowball!) weather. John and the boys headed out this morning to shovel the driveway and clean off the cars before the second round of snow hits. After the work was done, it was time for play. John was the primary architect of the mini-snowman, with a bit of help from Brennan. Owen took advantage of their focused efforts to lob some ice-crusted snow chunks in their direction, in his own version of a snowball fight! Grateful for more "fun" snow this time around!