They Grow Up So Fast: The Big Bike

Sarah's been biking for years — she stopped using training wheels at a younger age than either her dad or her mom did — but she had small-wheel kid bikes till now. A neighbor passed on a big kid bike (I think maybe 26 inches but she's out on it now so I can't check), so she's excited. We got it late last week but were busy with weekend stuff and I didn't get the seat lowered and chains adjusted till tonight.

Photo, as usual on the blog, not showing her face. Family who can see our Flickr site can see more, and I have a little video I'll probably post to YouTube.

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Father's Day

A quick note: Father's Day is drawing to an end. A nice family day. Lunch at Frost's Diner in Warrenton, leisurely driving in the Piedmont and foothills of Fauquier and Rappahannock counties, then home; dinner at Red Hot & Blue.

But it's still Father's Day for a few minutes, and blogging is too much like work, so that's it for now.

End of Third Grade; the Weekend

A busy three days. Two new videos up on the private YouTube site: Third Grade Awards Ceremony, and a visit today to southern Maryland.

Friday was the last day of Third Grade. An awards ceremony was held, and Sarah's certificates are on the video. Then it was a Daddy day; Tam attended the ceremony, as did I, but since I have Fridays at home and everything was over by 11 am, I had the day with Sarah: lunch at La Madeleine, a visit to Best Buy and Target to spend some of her allowance and a little extra "graduation" money (bought a video game), other errands.

Yesterday (Saturday was kind of routine. A little shopping, a short trip to Alexandria, then everybody got tired and we went home. Today: southern Maryland. She wanted to go to Solomon's Island, I said if we go to a favorite place let's do one new thing on the way, so we went to Surratt's Tavern Museum, a key site on John Wilkes Booth's escape route and part of our ongoing Lincoln bicentennial adventure. Then on to Solomon's Island for a brief visit to the Calvert Marine Museum before it closed, then ice cream on the boardwalk. Then home, and dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Tired; I'll try to catch this up another time.

A Quick Weekend Report

It's late and I'm tired, but a quick summary of the weekend: yesterday we went to see Up, which Tam and I liked but Sarah complained about. Also shopping and errands. Today, a lovely day, we went out to Maryland — we asked Sarah if she preferred a drive in Maryland of Virignia and she said "I'll take the Old Line State" — she'd had to do a report on Maryland and knew the state nickname as a result.

We visited the Monocacy Aqueduct, where an old aqueduct carried the C&O Canal across the mouth of the Monocacy River where it flows into the Potomac; a two part video is up at YouTube. We also drove past Sugarloaf Mountain but Sarah didn't want to go up, and paid a quick visit to the Monocacy Civil War Battlefield. Not a lot, but at least we got out.

I discovered that the two parts of our Day 3 of the New York Trip YouTube posting were rejected by YouTube due to being over 10 minutes long, caused by a glitch I inadvertantly introduced. That's being fixed now, but I suspect day three of the NYC trip will appear above (that is, after) the Monocacy Trip.

Cheers.