The Shining Sea Bikeway

Today I am living my dream.

My whole life I've wanted to go on a bike tour with my family. Everything has built to this moment. First, I had to lock down a husband. Next, produce 5 kids. Then I had to teach the 5 kids to ride bikes. Next, we made best friends with a family who lives to ride like we do. Finally, we toured the Shining Sea Bikeway. This is everything!

 The Shining Sea Bikeway is named after the Poem, "America the Beautiful" written by Katherine Lee Bates. She was a resident of Falmouth Massachusetts where the bikeway originates. It is a 20 mile round trip from North Falmouth to Woodshole. All of it is on an old rail trail, off roads and hugging the coast and completely flat.

The trail hugs the coastline passing by wetlands, bird refuges, cranberry bogs and forests. It is absolutely breathtaking. We actually only did 14 miles because we got a late start. But we will definitely be back. I am so proud of this tiny peddaler who begged to keep going when we called it quits. He is a biking rock star.

Special thanks to Sister Ashley who is now Little Chief's best friend. 

She was his biking buddy and they talked Pokemon the whole way.

 Happiest day ever.

Too Cool For School

Superkid: 9th Grade

Little Chief: 3rd Grade

Abizella: 8th Grade

Tadpole: 6th Grade

Jaws: Kindergarten

The Best Policy

Today in his Primary class, Little Chief was presented with several scenarios to test his honesty. His teacher reported that in every scenario LC stated that he would lie in that situation. At the end his teacher asked him if he would really lie about everything. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "At least I am being honest with you right now."

35-Miler

The last long ride, before THE LONG ride.

We picked up a few more Hingham ward guys for our bike gang.

I cna't enough of Scituate light.

Back-to-School

This is a big year for the Toads. We have 3 transitions:

Superkid: High school and Early Morning Seminary

Tadpole: Middle school 

Jaws: Kindergarten 

The Middle-Schoolers are first to leave... 

Abizella off to 8th grade and Tadpole off to 6th grade

Superkid will be the first kid out in the morning once Seminary starts later this week- but High School starts after Middle School.

On the first day, Little Chief was off by himself to Elementary School because Kindergarten doesn't start until later in the week. LC is starting 3rd grade!

And Jaws got to go meet his teacher and check out his classroom.

But finally Jaws had his big first day too! He was so flipping excited! 

I was excited too because Pops had court that morning so I got to be the morning mom and take the kids to school.

I love the sight of my sweeties walking to school together!

I love that I got to walk hand-in-hand with this Kindergarten kid. 

I even got a wink out of him. He was one of the first kids to arrive at his classroom. He walked straight in and found his chair. It was a done deal.

I came home and found that Blankie was left bravely on the counter to await Jaws' arrival home.

It was about a blizzilion degrees on Jaws' first day of school. There is no air conditioning at the school. The boys came out SOAKED in sweat. It was bad enough outside but it was a sauna in the school.

I got a brief smile- probably relief to be released from the oven...

But our moods when south fast. 

We grabbed all of the kids and cooled off with some Slurpees. 

After the Slurpees we were ready to call Back-to-School a success!

Breakfast Biking Boys

Tadpole, Little Chief and I biked down to Wompatuck to ride the pump track.

We had so much fun we decided to keep up the adventure and do some trails too.

We rewarded our efforts with breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. Yum!