Momentus Bike Day

Today was a very big milestone for the kids: DD took off her training wheels and DS got a "big boy" bike!

Here's DD, looking pretty happy with herself (as well she should!!). I only had to push her once, for about 5 feet, and she was off and going like she'd been doing it for years! She hasn't fallen once, amazingly! Her training wheels had gotten bent up a bit and she's been balancing for a while, but she still relied on them at times so I didn't want to take them off too soon. Now she's riding like she's never had them on at all. Amazing! She turns six in May, and she had a hard time with brother getting a bike while she didn't get anything--never mind that she'll get tons of stuff for her birthday--so I let her get the horn she's tooting in the picture below.

And here's DS, doing a great job of pedaling his new bike! He had a little bit of a hard time with the brake being part of the pedaling, but he's figuring it out pretty quickly. For the first half-hour or so I had to keep running over to him and moving his legs so that he could see why he was stopped and wasn't going to go anywhere, but by the time I made him come inside (so I could cook dinner--I'm SUCH a mean Mom) I only had to help him once or twice in 20 minutes.

I'm being really hard-nosed about making the kids wear their helmets, and I'm trying to set a good example by always wearing mine. Of course *I* didn't get on my bike today--I was too busy running after Ryan. I'm hoping that by Wednesday he'll be comfortable enough with his new bike that we (the kids and me) can bike to school and back.

And here's a picture of our cat, Fred. Ryan always points to him and says "That's MY cat, Fred!" LOL! Never mind that Fred is older than both kids, he's Ryan's cat apparently.

Fred is a BIG kitty--we ran across some of his paw prints in the mud the other day and Gillian got really mad because she thought that a dog had been running around in our back yard (which is fenced). He has HUGE paws. I'll have to see if I can get a picture of them in a way that shows just how big they are. He's a darn good cat, even if he does look somewhat demonic in all the pictures I have of him--he has light-colored eyes and he doesn't like to have them open much when I'm taking pictures. (Not like I use the flash on him outside--he must be remembering being inside and having the flash go off.) Silly cat!

Hopefully I'll have some knitting progress to report tomorrow--today I managed to get two rounds done on the Shetland Tea Shawl, which is some progress but not a lot! :-)

I've been going through some pictures and ran across this one. My wonderful hubby had gotten me roses a while back (I think these were for Mother's Day last year) and I just had to take a few pictures. I got a little creative with some framing in PhotoShop.