Let there be light. And warmth. And melting snow. And it was glorious. This week we had temperatures in the (gasp!) 50s, 60s, and even a 70 or two. Most of the week was spent making kids play outside and riding around with the sunroof open and windows down, just because we could. We all stayed outside as much as possible, re-acquainting our bodies with that thing called Vitamin D. At one point R went outside to talk on the phone and I spent some time offended, until I realized that he was not out there to tell some secret thing that he hated about me, but just because it was nice enough to sit on our porch.

On Saturday we set out for a nice easy bike ride from my parent’s house to Mt. Vernon. It’s 16 miles round-trip, and I had done about half of it before. Here are some things we learned on that trip.

1. My step-dad is about 5 inches taller than R, and when you can’t figure out how to move a seat down on a bike, it makes for a long trip.

2. The last mile of said trip is steeply uphill. Sometimes you have to admit defeat and get off the bike and walk.

3. My mom needs her brakes fixed, badly. There were several lots of times when I realized all of a sudden that I was flying down a hill and that there was a sharp turn/road crossing/other person coming towards me and I just had to start yelling “can’t stop! can’t stop! no brakes!” to save us all. Close calls, my friends, close calls.

4. You can’t “just walk around” the gardens at Mt. Vernon. You have to pay to get in at all. But they do have a lovely gift shop.

5. 16 miles is not THAT far, but for the unexperienced bike rider, it feels like forever. It was fun and nice to be outside, but we have been paying for those 4 hours spent on the bikes. (if you feel like 4 hours is a ridiculous amount of time for just 16 miles…feel free to keep that to yourself.)

6. Still totally worth it.

We’re sucking every minute out of our 4-day weekend. I just baked a cake completely from scratch, icing and all, and later we’ll be outside some more. Because there’s snow coming this week, and I want to have every second of sunshine possible logged in my brain.