Sometimes mom whines too.

In the past three Saturdays we have biked for over 150 kms as a family.
The first Saturday, we biked from Canmore to Lake Minnewanka to Banff and back.  Wow, the scenery was incredible.  The climb to Lake Minnewanka was challenging, as it was a pretty long uphill but then it was a tonne of fun going back down.  When we asked our kids what their favorite part of that ride was, they said it was the ice cream we had in Banff.  Not the world-class scenery, it was the ice cream.  All right.  At least they appreciate a good Mcdonald's cone.  It did taste pretty amazing but most things do when you've worked up an appetite by exercising outside.

The next Saturday we parked up at Pierce Estate park and biked over to the Stampede grounds, around behind the Talisman Centre and then down to the Glenmore Reservoir and back.  A good reminder that you really haven't seen the beauty that Calgary has to offer until you've hit the trail system.  It is so incredible.

This past Saturday we decided to start from our house and ride over to the Glenmore reservoir and back.  My legs were tired to start with because I had been doing weights all week and had run almost 2 hours the day before.  It was a 58 km loop and as you can imagine, Adam and I end up doing most of the work pulling the tag along bikes.  The kids do pedal but it's kind of a casual rotation of the crank, rather than a real driving push.

As we got closer to the turnaround point, Adam seemed like he wanted to go for the yellow jersey and I had a hard time keeping up.  This annoyed me somewhat, so I may or may not have done some whining about that when we stopped for our snack.  Then Adam noticed that Riley's front tooth was looking gray-ish.  It's been loose for weeks but he has resisted our attempts to let us pull it out because he wanted it to "fall out on it's own."  We've respected his agency, trying to give him control over his own body but we reminded him that the tooth needed to come out.  So he turned away, gave it a pull himself and out flew the tooth into a pile of gravel.  Hmmm....that's great, but now we need to actually find it.

After finding the little item, we headed back.  This time I was determined to win the jersey and asked Adam if Kyla and I could lead.  We make it back to the Ranche (25km) in an hour.  After another snack/washroom break we started on the last short leg home. Adam thought we should loop around to the north bridge but as we started that way I realized my legs were shot and I was officially a whiny momma.  Adam said, "if you stop whining I'll give you a foot rub when we get home."  He also reminded me of the quote by Jeffrey R Holland that I always remind him of when he's the whiny one.  "Nothing is so bad that whining won't make it worse."  My mature little four year old was also buoying me up from behind.  "Mom, don't worry, we're almost there.  Just enjoy it."

Sometimes mom whines too.

Oh and we've decided that we are now the touring Mexicans.