New Bikes

We went and bought Quinn and Catherine bikes today. Man, there's something I don't want to do again anytime soon. After lunch we started on this little adventure. We went to a Washington Bike Center, Toys 'R' Us, Dick's Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Sears, McDonalds (okay, so it was getting late and this was for ice cream), Target, and finally back to Toys 'R' Us. This was like the marathon bike shopping expedition. The Washington Bike Center clearly had the best bikes and the lifetime maintenance, but the only way to really get your money worth there was to own the bike for more than 2 or 3 years, and the only way that could happen was if we got a 20 inch bike (which is just a tad too big for Quinn to ride comfortably). After finding nothing for boys at any of the other stores except Toys 'R' Us, we finally went back there and bought an 18 inch bike. He'll probably outgrow it pretty quick, but here's my take, it was under 1/3 the price of a bike from the Washington Bike Center. So if he uses it for at least a year then I think we'll have gotten our money's worth from it (and if it falls apart prior to that, then we're not out that much either). I'm not sure what the best part of the day was, the part where Quinn wasn't able to stop as he was riding a bike around the open spaces in the Toys 'R' Us and running into stuff, or me having to run after Quinn as he's biking across half the store and losing track of Catherine (scared Ginger half to death). Although we did come up with a potential anger management technique for Quinn. A punching bag which he played with at Dick's Sporting Goods (I have to add the "Sporting Goods" on there because I'm just not comfortable typing the abbreviated name).

After all that we didn't get home till after 8. The kids were in bed and asleep by 9 (they crashed pretty quick since they had missed their naps). So it's been a long day. Ginger and I finished the day off by ordering Chinese for dinner and watching a movie, then we assembled Quinn's bike (Catherine's came assembled already). I didn't get to take pictures today (I suspect there will be lots tomorrow as the kids use their new bikes). But I do have this video taken from a park visit last week (under 2 minutes).


Swinging in the Park