My New Bike!

My kids are a little cautious, as some of you are already aware. They were not very physically active at a young age, and definitely were not wanting to learn how to ride bikes. Carl cycles a lot and enjoys it for the exercise as well as for fun. I have not had a bike since, well...I think it was my late teens. I rode around the neighborhood and sometimes even to the beach with Tina.

But I did learn when I was about 5-6. Times have changed, where we used to ride around at an early age, I would not let my kids ride alone anywhere in any neighborhood. Together, maybe around the block. So when we bought some garage sale bikes and urged the kids to ride, we got a lot of resistance. They were just not interested. We waited a while and then tried again, still no go. Kaleigh even got a bike with some money she earned from a drawing contest, but she still didn't learn...too afraid of falling. Then this last Spring, Kaleigh got an offer of a bike from a friend at church for free, and we told her, "if you take the bike you need to learn how to ride." She agreed and learned pretty quickly to ride. She had so much fun that at the end of the school year, Cole decided he wanted to learn too. He had a small bike (which I thought would be fine for him to learn since he could touch the ground with both feet) and it took a few tries but he got it too. Now, ever since I told the kids they needed to learn, I have told them that when they learn to ride, then I would buy a bike and go riding around with them. So, they learned before our vacation and I said I would get a bike as soon as we got home. So...all that to get to this. Today we went and not only got my bike, the photo above, but we upgraded Cole to a bigger bike as well. So now we can ride as a family! Yay!