Thursday, May 24, 2007

I saw the strangest thing as I was driving down 5&20

OK. Actually I saw some pretty interesting things... a dead bird, a dead turtle, some cool lights, a couple of big frogs, some cool mailboxes and oh, yeah, I wasn't driving I was walking. In protest of the high gas prices and as a matter of principle and to get better fit and to save a couple bucks we are trying to drive as little as possible. No one walks in this town so we are weird.

Whenever possible except for in extreme snow I walked to Bible study this year, except for the few weeks when I went to the laundry mat directly after Bible study. Everyone was amazed that I walked. It was less than a mile and the kids enjoy it. We always walk to my grandparents house about a half a mile away. Everyone thinks that is strange and my grandparents often ask if we want a ride home at the end of our visit. Today we actually walked to Paul and AmyJo's house which is about 2 miles. I grew up in that house and I don't think that I have ever walked between here and there before. Well, now I have. Caleb and Hannah rode home with AmyJo and Glenn and I walked with Lydia and Abigail in the stroller on the way there and it took us about 30 minutes. We played and had dinner together and then all 6 of us walked home. We were going to have the girls switch out riding and walking but then Hannah tripped and skinned her knee really bad and Lydia was so tired that Glenn carried Abigail and Hannah and Lydia got to ride until we were about 1/4 mile from home. We had a couple of flashers on our backs and Glenn's headlamp on my head and everyone was carrying one of the really bright LED flashlights we got at Real Deals Dollar store. We got some funny looks I'm sure, most of which we couldn't see. We did have one brief encounter with the police coming to check out the weird lights but it was just Dave, Paul's friend and it was no big deal. Caleb walked the whole 2 miles home and we are so proud of him!! My feet hurt and I'm tired but I am sure that we will do it again. We are trying to figure out a way to get all of us around on human powered wheels as it is a lot faster! Right now we just have one kid seat and a trailer that holds 2. Caleb is doing great riding his bike but I don't know that we can trust him to ride on 5&20 yet. It took us a little less than 50 minutes to get home which wasn't too bad since we stopped a couple times to fix shoes, kiss boo boos, etc. A quick first aid site was set up to assess the damages and apply bandaids then to bed for a well deserved good night's sleep.

I think that we need to wear signs that say "Pass Gas". It is the HPV (human powered vehicle) motto. Even if we can do it part of the time it sure will save us money in our gas guzzler Suburban.

That's all for now. I need to post some pictures of our last couple of months, I just never put pictures on this computer, so, if we get a rainy day and get our school work done early.... neither of which happen often but I can always hope.

Oh, and the title of this post is what we think other people were saying/thinking as they drove past.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Going in the great outdoors

We have been taking walks out back behind our place and walking around the pond. We have located a Killdeer nest, a Robin's nest and a Canadian Goose nest. We know that there are more Killdeer nests out there because there are several momma's that pretend that they have a broken wing as we walk around. Tonight we forgot the "make sure you use the facilities" message before we left. While we were out there both of the potty trained girls decided they needed to go. Glenn waited until I got there and they came running up to tell me. They then dropped their drawers right in the middle of the path. Hannah got the back of her shorts wet. I think that Lydia liked feeling the wind on her bum because she kept deciding she needed to go again and again. We finally got through to her that she needed to get off the path before undressing. She never got more than 2 feet into the weeds though. We will have to work on that. Glenn's MCAT is on Friday then we are going camping!! Can't wait. I guess today was practice for next weekend.