Beautiful Day Riding

I took the kids to FDR Park today to ride our bikes in the beautiful weather.  I quickly learned that Ella still has some work to do on the whole "enjoying" part of riding our bikes together.

It's so hard because, at times, she loves it.  However - if she falls once then she freaks out and biking is something that was created by the devil.  She will have nothing to do with it.  Then that snowballs into the other kids.  See - if Ella refuses to get on her bike then none of us are going anywhere - and the other kids know it. Fortunately peer pressure usually wins out and Ella climbs on her bike and woefully trudges ahead until she forgets all about the bad parts and is loving it again... for the moment.

We stopped by the skate park at FDR park at about 1:00 and it was early enough that there were some other kids there that were our age.  We mainly watched from the sidelines but Robby was particularly intrigued.

I think that the awesomest thing about today was Sammy - and how he helped out his little sister.  As I mentioned, Ella doesn't like riding bikes.  Sammy knows this and immediately volunteered to stay with her all day.  "Dad - you can ride up with Robby and James and make sure that they don't go too far ahead.  I'll stay back with Ella."  I thought he was full of it, but other than a few minutes at the skate park he was, literally, at her side all day long.  When she fell a few times, he helped her up.  He helped her walk her bike across the road at one point.  He guided her through some puddles.  He really impressed me today.  He's a great kid...

James and Anna both agreed, I think, that lunch was the best part of their day.  They both ride well, and enjoy riding, but when got our Cheesesteaks from Tony Luke's the smiles lit up their little faces.  I don't have any pics of them devouring the steaks because I was doing the same thing to my steak at that time.

It isn't easy getting out with all of the kids, their bikes, and my bike too - but we did it.  This was the first time that we were able to get all of the bikes on the rack and also my bike broken down and put into the back of the SUV.  Now that we've done it once... I think we're in trouble because I know I can do it over and over again, now.  Woo hoo!