Ready to Ride.....

Last summer John and I were able to spend more time than usual on our bikes. I truly enjoy riding around the back roads of Southern Medina and Wayne counties.  Nearly every time we went out together, John would tell me that I really did need a new bike.  The term "need" and "new" doesn't often enter into the same sentence with him.  My current bike was nearly 15 years old and although still in great shape, a road-style bike would make our rides more enjoyable for me (according to John).  So, this winter, I decided to take the plunge and purchase a new bike.  I'm anxious for the day that the weather will be agreeable and I can give this new bike a test ride!

One Little Word

One little word is a project that was inspired and shared a few years ago by Ali Edwards.  Each year she picks a word to focus on during the upcoming year.  A type of New Year's resolution, I guess you could say.  An effort to find something that you might want to change or remember or reflect on during the year.  I've played along for the last few years choosing words such as journey, gratitude and simplify.  I've used simplify for the last couple of years and decided I needed to find a new word this year.

I started thinking about a word a few weeks ago.  I thought I had found a good one.  One that seemed to suit me and could cover a variety of things that I would like to address in 2011.

Problem is, now it's three weeks later and I cannot for the life of me remember the word.

So, maybe it wasn't such a great word after all.

My ever-so-helpful husband has been trying to make some suggestions, none of which I can print here.

Maybe "remember" should be my word, since I seem to have such a difficult time "remembering".

Good thing I still have a couple more days until New Years........

The Big "E"

 

This is my first photo that I've entered at I heart faces.

This past weekend, my daughter and I spent some time decorating a big "E" that we've had for ages.  She picked out a handful of scrapbooking paper that she felt best described her current interest--music, soccer, rocks, water, chocolate chip cookies, etc.  While watching a Harry Potter movie together, we tore, glued and pasted for the rest of the evening.  When the theme was paper, I figured I better hurry up and take a picture of our project.

She's pretty pleased with how her big "E" turned out.  At least that's one craft project off the to-do list!

What Holiday?

This morning, at 6:30 a.m., I sat down and had a nice little breakfast with my son before we headed off to work and school. John, who has crowned himself  the "Hot-breakfast Dad,"  had made a healthy bowl of oatmeal for each of us.

From the kitchen he asked our son, "Guess what holiday we're celebrating today?"

"The sinking of the Titanic?" replied the eighth-grader.

"Close," said the Hot-breakfast Dad. 

"It's your mom's birthday."

Nice. Real nice.

I just love my family.

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.