What we did last weekend

Hi - Chris here...posting on our family blog...

The children like to ride their bikes to school and we're perfectly happy to oblige them in that regard. It means less "I can't walk anymore...I'm too tired...can you PLEASE carry me?"

It is a bit difficult, however, for Chase to ride with his training wheels on the sidewalk (or "pavement" as they say here) because the paving stones are often uneven, and riding over the cracks and bumps causes him to lose his balance when using his training wheels. So, he's been asking for us to teach him to ride without training wheels for several weeks now. Plus, his cousin in California, who is 4 days older than him, sent us video of her riding her two wheeler without training wheels over a month ago, so that was a litttle bit of extra motivation for Chase.

We first tried a few weeks ago by taking Chase to a park and having me run along side him while he tried to get the hang of it, but there were too many people on the pathways that day and it was still a little too cold, so he was pretty frustrated. Now that we've been having some warmer weather more consistently, he was starting to pester again...

So finally, this past Saturday, we went out to a dead-end road near our house to try again. We did once up and back with only one training wheel, but then he insisted he was ready. So, just like Isabelle did when she learned, I took the second training wheel off, and away he went. Luckily, I had Isabelle filming using my phone. We took a few more videos with my phone, but when we got home, we realized they were really poor quality, so we decided to go back out with the better camera and take some more. When I got back, I had a little fun with the video editing software, but I think the results are pretty fun...