The Library Roll

In Fredericksburg, there's this little community library.  It is operated completely by volunteers and funded by donations.  I just love the thought that a group of people so valued the idea of a library in their community that they really did what it takes to make something like that happen. 

Six years ago, they started a bicycle ride called the "Library Roll" in order to raise funds to help operate the library.  When John saw the flier for this ride, he immediately said that he'd like to do this.  We enjoy supporting something like this and we've always enjoyed bicycling, so it seemed like a great thing to do as a family.

When we checked in for the ride today, we were reminded by the volunteer that we've participated in nearly every ride for the past six years.  I had almost forgotten that we started doing this ride when I was pulling the little girl in a trailer behind my bike.  Wow, time flies.

The ride is completely on the Holmes County trail.  It's a really nice, paved path that's well kept and travels through some really pretty Holmes county areas.  Being Holmes County, you not only share the path with other cyclist and walkers and runners, but you also share the path with Amish buggies.

Instead of alerting each other to "walker ahead" or "bike behind", the call was actually "poop ahead". 

Yeah, the kids got a really big kick out of that one. 

The shortest distance is 18 miles, with a nice little snack stop at the 9 mile point.  They serve homemade cookies, fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made on homemade bread.  Just the right thing to re-fuel and re-motivate the kids for the 9 mile trek back to the start. 

It's kind of funny, but the conversation during these rides almost always involves books.  What the kids are reading, what have been their favorites and what ones are on the "I really need that book" list.  They usually find themselves trying to recite a favorite Shel Silverstein poem (because so many of those are fun and easy to remember) or Dad's favorite Robert Frost poem (because Dad bribed them with a dollar a few years ago if they would memorize it).  Pretty appropriate for a library ride.

At the end of the ride, there's always fry pies and a new t-shirt to add to the collection.

Oh, and a few sore bums, but also a lot of pride for riding!

3,000 Bouncy Balls

It's not too hard to talk our kids into a trip to the library.  In fact, they get pretty excited about it.  Yes, a trip to the library is sometimes the highlight of their week.  Last night, we offered them a trip to the Medina library, but failed to mention that the purpose of the trip was to watch 3,000 bouncy balls being dropped inside the library from the third floor.

They actually were pretty upset because the library part was closed and they were unable to check out books.

Angry looks and all, is what we received at first.

Fortunately, watching 3,000 bouncy balls hit the ceramic tile kinda made up for that.

Oh, and the pizza afterwards helped too.

Thanks Medina Library!

A few extra acorns?

A few weeks ago we lost a large limb from our old oak tree.  The limb was overloaded with acorns and simply could not bear the weight of those acorns any longer. 

The Dad that lives at this house started thinking about what could be done with all of those acorns.  I'm not quite sure how he came to pull together a couple of bike tubes that had blow outs earlier this year (or why in the world he still had them hanging around), some bungee cords and some leftover duct tape from this project. But, put them together he did.  In the end, the kids ended up with a pretty cool acorn launcher.

Just another way to reuse, re-purpose and recycle, I guess. 

Back to School

It's hard to believe that I now have a fifth-grader and an eight-grader. The years sure do fly by way too quickly. The school year, so far, is off to a good start. One of the fifth-grader's teacher is having a "silly band" year.

"B"ring materials to class
"A"ttend school regularly
"N"otice the details
"D"o the right thing

The kids can earn a silly band for turning in homework timely each week and the teacher gives them out as incentives or rewards for other various things during the week. What a fun and creative way to use a current "trend" to encourage and reward kids!

The eight grader is loving his classes as well, especially science. His teacher used a bunson burner to create a "geyser" this week--any time you do something like that you're gonna get a 13-year-old boys attention!

Of course, we had to take the annual first day of school pictures. I always make the kids hold up the number of fingers to represent what grade they are going in to. They're probably gonna hate me for this someday. 

Once they were home from school, we  celebrated with a special back to school treat.  A great start to what I'm sure will be a great school year.