Two wheeling

Two wheeling a video by mandy&john on Flickr.

Oh, yeah. Alex is now done with training wheels. This is from last week. He did a couple laps of the driveway. I can't say enough about the balance bikes. Alex only really started using his this winter. We noticed last week that his feet weren't on the ground at all going down hill.

Of course you could just remove the pedals from a regular bike, but the balance bikes are a lot lighter to carry home when they get tired and don't want to go back up the hills.

Tire swing chicken

IMG_1509, a photo by mandy&john on Flickr.

We went out to Holland (Mass) last weekend for a free pancake breakfast on a maple farm. The syrup was straight out of the shack. We went with the cousins and all four boys rode in our car.
They pretended the other car was a pirate ship , so the whole ride was one long chase. At the farm, they found a tire swing and an older girl to push them. One would ride the swing and the others would dive out of the way at the last minute.

Recollections of Alice

Recollections of Alice a video by mandy&john on Flickr.

Alex picked Alice's Adventures in Wonderland off the shelf tonight and, after asking me to read it, dropped it on his foot. This is the hard cover umpteenth edition annotated Alice with both Wonderland and Looking Glass. That must have hurt. My first reaction was no because they barely sat through two months ago. I think I said something along the lines of: "It's too far over your head. I don't think you understood what was going on when we read it last time."

This is Alex's response with some help from Chris. I had to stop him half way through and get my phone out, but he started over from the beginning pretty well. Not too much changed for the camera other than Chris wanting to be involved.

Rainy day fun

We had hoped to take the boys and their cousins out to Jellystone Park for waterslides, mini-golf, and camping, but we were scared off by the weather. We spent the day at the museum of science instead. I think they had fun.

More photos and a video at Flickr.

Chris rides a bike

Chris rides a bike a video by mandy&john on Flickr.

At Christmas, Chris got a no-pedals bike from my mom. He got so good at balancing and cruising on it that he's moved on to riding a regular bike!

(Alex still attracts the older girls like flies on honey)

Happy Fourth!

IMG_4641, a photo by mandy&john on Flickr.

We went out to Old Sturbridge Village. The boys enjoyed the parade and the mills. They even got to sign a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Sunday morning at the pond

I took the boys and Joey fishing today. We had a really nice time until Chris fell in. The water is only a foot deep there, but he was leaning in to grab a water spider and fell in face first. He came up drenched from head to toe.

He initially vowed never to go fishing again, but admitted that he was having fun up until he fell in. We had some hot chocolate with lunch when we got home. That seemed to make everything better.