Oh the trouble with paints

Well I thought it was about time to get the paint out and let the Little kids have some painting fun. Bridgette is on the end, laughing at the paint she got on her face. Then Samantha and the other end is Teddy.

Alexis and Olivia are hard at work making thier materpieces.

I wonder why I haven't gotten the paints out until now??

Here is Teddy:

Samantha:

And Bridgette:

Samantha says not want to stop painting!!

Teddy our Smurf?? :)

Alexis helping clean him up.

The Aftermath:

Thanks for peaking in on us!! :)

The first ride on the new Bike

So I got my brand new bike yesterday, and since Alexis wanted Daddy to go with her to soccer, I decided on a test ride with the kids. Keep in mind that I have not been on any kind of bike in almost 3 years.


The kids were pretty excited to get into Moms new bike. And to go off on a bike ride. I was just going to ride a quarter of a mile up our dirt road to the stop sign and back. But once we got to the stop sign Olivia said "lets keep going!!" They were all having fun, and I was surprised at the ease of the bike on the dirt road.


So we road on and got onto the paved path about a third of a mile from our house. WOW the paved path was even easier. I thought am I really riding with an extra 100 plus pounds of kids?? Not to mention the extra 30 I could stand to lose. Not only was riding it very easy, but there was another bonus, I can see the kids and I carried on a conversation with Olivia, my almost 4 year old, on the way.

We turned a few heads in the cars that passed us. And then we crossed paths with another biker and the kids waved and said "hi" to the other biker too. He smiled at us.

When I talked to the owner of boxcycles, Will, he told me that it takes about a half a day of riding around to get used to it. And he also shared that he road around New York City on his boxcycle for 7 hours to deliver a boxcycle to someone. So he really means a half day, 12 hours. So here are some things I found a little hard turning made me nervous, it takes very wide turns and I needed to go slow. I decided to get off the bike and turn it, lucky for me the path is straight. Also I felt a little uneasy when the road was slanted.

Tonight I road about 2.5 miles total, so I figure to get Wills "half day" of experience it will take me about 2 weeks. So after I have broken in myself and the bike, I will give another update.

Thanks for peaking in on us!! :)

A New Bike

A few months ago, I found myself searching for a bike trailer for 3 kids. After hours of searching and asking my moms of multiples groups there was no such thing as a triplet bike trailer. So I continued searching, I do know of 2 moms that have creative husbands that made them bikes to fit their triplets and more on. But we have no skills with welding here so that did not work out.

So I continued on with search engines looking for creative ways to bike with kids, some had tagalongs with a bike trailer attached, that might work if I only had Alexis and twins. And then I saw a bike with a box in the front, could this be my answer???

Well I found the bikes were called Bakfiets, and they were made in Denmark. I searched and for some reason could not find anywhere that sold these in the US. I set the idea on hold and then summer came, and I wanted to get out riding a bike, some exercise. So again I started looking for the Bakfiets or Cargo Bikes, and it just so happened that I accidentally found a company called boxcycles, these were bikes made in Denmark, making their initial debut in the United States this summer.

On June 6th I emailed the owner Will, who promptly got back to me and the bikes were sold out, only 100 came in on the first shipment in July, but they would have more in the Fall coming and were hoping for a Minnesota retailer. He said they could definitely customize it for 4 kids.

Well on July 27th, they found they had 1 bike left from that initial shipment and a bikeshop willing to sell the bike if they had a buyer and was I still interested. Long story short I now have an amazing bike Thanks to Will at Boxcycles and Rob at Varsity Bikes in Minneapolis. Here is a picture of my new ride!!





Check back for my next update on how the initial ride went.

Thanks for peaking in on us.

Pictures

A friend of mine, Jennifer, is just getting started in photography and took some fantastic pictures of my kids. My 5 are really hard to capture and she did it!!! Here is a little peak at a few of my favorites!!!



Alexis, 6 1/2 years old, so grown up.

Olivia, almost 4, covered in bug bites but still adorable.

My FAVORITE picture, Samantha, she was a ham, smiled alot and got in alot of the pictures. (22 months old in this photo)

Bridgette, she is my character, she is hard to get still to get a photo of, but Jennifer managed to do it!! YAY 22 months old here)

Teddy, my little man, the strong silent type, he was very stingy with the smiles, Jennifer managed to catch his personality so well.

We will be scheduleing a family photo shoot this Fall, I can hardly wait, I am hoping for late September or early October. Here is Jennifers website: Jennifer Gail Photography , she is super nice and does a great job. Thank-You!!!

Thanks for peaking in on us!!