Busy week

This is the first week of summer vacation, though it seems like we are more busy than we were during school. Lori has been driving all over the valley. The kids are enrolled in swimming lessons, still doing gymnastics, and Sierra just started piano lessons this week. She likes playing the piano, but not the drudgery of practice, so I know she is definitely my daughter. The teacher (Lori's cousin Audrey) gave Sierra an assignment for practice, which pretty much constitutes the first 3 pages of her work book. But I think Sierra is getting bored with playing the same thing over and over again, because she keeps wanting to move on beyond those pages. She's getting better at playing the assigned passages, but I hope, for her sanity and mine, that Audrey will let her move on next week.


The other exciting news (aside from all that and buying a piano too) is that Sierra began riding her bike without training wheels this week. She had been begging to get them off her bike, ever since her friend Gage had his removed last week. So, Monday evening, I ran out of excuses (I really wasn't looking forward to chasing her bike up and down the street while holding the seat to keep it steady), and removed the training wheels. The first pass up and down the street, she did pretty good, though she kept leaning to one side. She denied she was doing it until I let go of the seat briefly to prove my point. After the second pass though, she had it down! All in all, I think it took about 10 minutes for her to be able to ride without the training wheels, though it took a few practice turns for her to be able to make a turn without putting a foot down to save herself a fall. She's been zipping all over the neighborhood since. We've gone on a few small rides together, and perhaps this weekend, we'll go down to the parks along the river and ride for a bit. She's a little nervous about that, because of all the people that walk/ride along the bike path, but I think with a little more practice, she can handle it.