you wanna ride bikes?

One great thing about living in Arizona is the near constant possibility of a bike ride.  Sometimes it may be a very short ride requiring a gallon of water and several forms of sun protection but you can truly get out there and pedal almost any old time.  Today the kids and I had oh, about 8 hours to ourselves while dh worked (on a Saturday...ugh) and went to a church meeting.  The boys quickly exhausted their screen time at which point we were faced with 6 hours to fill.  Washed the car. Made pizzas. Regaled Mom with hilarious songs about Boots the Monkey getting attacked by aliens (sigh). My mood was deteriorating; half-heartedly I floated the idea of a bike ride.  The boys agreed and we were off to the bike path.  We rode farther than we ever had before and at the end we found a sweet little park with GRASS (a rarity here) and a sort of retaining pond with WATER in it (again, a rarity) surrounded by rocks just begging to be thrown in that water.

A few weeks ago Super Q and I took our bikes to the drugstore (night-time candy run).  He was very earnest and serious about bicycle safety.  Riding ahead of me, helmet slightly crooked, he indicated right turns, stops, and some crazy made-up signal for "straight ahead."  As we left the busy street and entered our neighborhood, he yelled back to me, "In the neighborhood you don't have to walk your bike across the streets! Also there's no traffic lights!"  You can learn a lot about bicycle safety from a 9 year old.