Yesterday made for simply a wonderful afternoon and evening. After school both kids had a friend over. It was good to see little Alison have her friend Emma over to play with, as I sometimes worry that she is about as anti-social as I am sometimes. Kayla had Zoe over.
I escaped for a quick moment and rode my old Diamond Back mountain bike to the liquor store for a twelve pack of beer. This bike is quite ugly, but it does serve a very practical purpose. It's the only bike in my collection that currently has a basket and baskets are great... This is such an odd bike that I picked up for free from a customer up at County Cycles who didn't think it was worth anything. Maybe it wasn't, but I use it quite a bit. Ancient "mountain bike" geometry with super-slack headtube angle and REALLY long chainstays makes it handle very weird. I put some riser-handlebars on it, but really could use something different yet for handlebars to counteract the strange handling.
It was a big night for Kayla. As over-protective parents, we haven't let Kayla walk up to Super America on her own before, despite her badgering and begging. I remember as a kid being able to go SO many places on my own. Anika is substantially more over-protective than I am. I was surprised that Anika actually let Kayla go up to Super America with Zoe to pick up some hot dog buns! Big moment around our house.
We hosted a make-shift dinner and everyone seemed to have a good time. "Dinner" was an interesting challenge: Zoe is a VERY picky eater and Emma has diabetes and has been on an insulin pump since the age of 2 1/2. (She'll correct you and say with her little Brooklyn-like accent: "awmost twee, 'cawz it wuz in Apwil." Dinner consisted of: hot dogs, (no bun for Emma), carrots, dip, strawberries, raspberries, and Cheetos. Mmmmm... I'm glad we don't normally eat like that... I'm glad that our kids are not picky eaters.
Off to Falcon Heights Elementary for some volunteer efforts to help out with Alison and the rest of the first graders for their upcoming play. There was much painting of "sets" to be done. Anika took Alison and Emma in the minivan. I cannot remember what the commotion was around the house was at the time... but Kayla and I missed the bus and decided to ride over to the school on the old Schwinn Twinn tandem.
I really enjoy riding around on the tandem with Kayla. It's such a great way to share time, be outside, ride around, explore and talk. We rode to the school and helped paint for a while. There were a TON of kids there with parents helping out. (We have a GREAT school with a lot of support from parents.) After helping for a little bit, Kayla and I escaped and went tooling around some more on the tandem before heading home. When we got home, we played catch with the baseball in the back yard. She did a much, much better job of actually catching the ball. It was good to see her smiling and proud of how she was doing.... It'll be interesting, but I expect she'll ask to play again tonight? It's good to see her take an interest in sports and activities. She did such a great job earlier this week in the "Jump Rope for Heart." She did a good job of combing the neighborhood in an attempt to get pledges and then got second in her class in the number of jumps: 1500 in a half an hour! Good job Kayla.
I'm SO not a sports person that I struggle with teaching and faking interest in playing catch or baseball, or football with her. I will have to put some of my own interests aside I think and continue to encourage her to actually do some activities.
It was fun to recap the evening with her as I tucked her into bed. We talked a little about our bike ride. I asked her how far she thought we went? "Oh, about a mile or so." So, I dragged her out of bed and off to the computer where I showed her as we plotted out where we went: http://www.routeslip.com/routes/38101 Good Job Kayla... we had fun.
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