A Bike Ride with Leah

Yesterday was a really nice day, it was my Mom's birthday, Memorial Day weekend and it was Sunday. All good things. After church we had a nice dinner with my parents to celebrate Mom's 56th birthday and then we decided to go to the cemetery to put flowers on the graves. The weather was a bit windy but not rainy like it seems to always be on Mom's birthday. We had a good time looking at all the graves, finding the oldest headstone, the biggest and even found out from one that Mom has third cousins here in Ashton, some of the Loosli's via the Seely line. Neat! We also were able to visit with an older lady in our ward whose husband just passed away this past week, Darlene French. She and her son were there taking pictures of the headstones of their family that had already passed on. She told us the story of her husband's passing and could tell that at least he went peacefully surrounded by family. She has always been a sweet lady and I remember her and her husband's presence in the ward since I was a little girl. It was a good trip to the cemetery.

After the cemetery we came back home to have some rhubarb crisp and ice cream. Grandpa Baum came up to visit too and we had a good time but then they started talking farm stuff so mom and I let them do that for a little while until I decided it was time to let mom have some time without farm talk and my kids which seem to get pretty crazy at her house. So I interrupted the farm talk and told Andrew we needed to head home. We did and Andrew, Lily and Russell decided they needed a nap. Leah and I were the only ones awake so I told her we should go for a Sunday bike ride. She got pretty excited so we grabbed our bikes and headed down the county road. I knew Leah had been starved for attention lately because I had been doing so many things to prepare for the dance recital that I pretty much let her have free reign on the house, her room and the TV. It was starting to show. Since we could only go as fast as her little legs and 20" bike with training wheels could take her we could carry on a pretty good conversation. She would periodically yell at me to look at her practicing riding without training wheels, i.e. try and balance on her bike so that her training wheels didn't make a sound. She got pretty excited for those few seconds. :) We went past the 1/2 mile mark pretty quickly, usually we have Lily with us so we have to turn back at that point but we kept going past the "house in the ground". She was pretty excited to be going further than she had ever been before. Past there another 1/4 mile is a "Rails to Trails". An old railroad track that they have converted into a trail for non motorized vehicles with the exception of snow-machine's in the winter. I told her we were going to go over a small bridge. She got pretty excited but soon found out that the trail we were on was quite a bit more difficult to ride on because of the soft dirt and gravel. She was still pretty persistent though, especially because she knew we were going to see a bridge over water. We got there after quite a few "hah", "ooohh" and "whews" from Leah, her way of telling me she was working hard to keep up and all of which were said with a smile on her face. Once we got to the bridge she decided she wanted to keep going so I decided we would go on to an even bigger bridge, the railroad bridge over Fall River that was another mile or 2 down the trail. Knowing we would have to take our time I decided to talk to her a bit more about what we saw on our little ride. She started noticing the beautiful wildflowers that were blooming on both sides of the trail, blue ones, yellow ones and even some trees with beautiful sweet smelling white blossoms. She mentioned that she was for sure that we were riding through a meadow, because she knew there were flowers and grass in meadows. She was telling me all she saw in her "syryppy" voice, that's what Mom and I call her voice that is EXTRA sweet. Not sure how else to explain it other than it's her, "Mom am I not the biggest sweetheart there ever was and you love me right?" voice. Anyway I love it, syrup and all. It means she is happy which makes me happy. So on down the trail we rode until I hear her screaming from just behind, I look to see if she has fallen but no she's still riding. I asked her what it was she was screaming about and she said, "I just saw a HUGE bug!!! ahhhhh!" I look down at her wheel to see that sure enough there was another one of those big ugly black beetles making it's way across the trail. I reassure her that it's not a big deal, just a big bug trying to get home to it's family for Sunday dinner. :) She seems satisfied with that thought until about a minute later she says, "That beetle gave me the creeps!" She obviously had still been thinking about it, so hoping her thoughts wouldn't turn into nightmares tonight I decided to change the subject.

By this time we were about to cross the Reclamation road so I told her to speed up so she could make it up the steep climb to the road. She rode super fast but only made it about half of the way up. She got off and pushed her bike the rest of the way up. We looked both ways and then crossed over to the other side where the trail continued across the road from the Dimond Loosli place which seemed funny to me because we were just talking about Dimond Loosli earlier at the cemetery. Anyway I decided I had better see if Leah was still able to ride the rest of the distance to the railroad bridge and she assured me that she was. It was a bit cloudy which made it nice for riding. I also noticed quite a few picture perfect spots for some family photo shoots I will have to take advantage of later. We could see the bridge in front of us, it's quite a ways off the ground over the river so I knew Leah would be a bit scared. She has a fear of heights, nothing too extreme but I knew she would be a little nervous about riding up so high. The people who redid the trail have done a great job in making the bridge safe to ride over with a good sized fence made of cables. The view beautiful! everything was so green, the Tetons were off in the distance with the sun shining on them and their snow covered tips and the sky was full of those dark blue clouds. My only regret was that I didn't have my camera! Darn! Leah was very excited to have reached her goal but was also anxious to turn around to go home knowing that she had only made it half way. We rode back to the reclamation road with only a few stop and gos due to Leah getting stuck in the loose gravel. I decided it would be best to take the reclamation road back to the county road instead of the rails to trails which was better for Leah to ride on. She loved it, I could tell she was soaking up every minute with me and I with her. I also realized I needed to do more things like this with each of my girls while they are still so young and especially now when Russell is so young and needs so much of my attention. I love spending time alone with them because they have such clever and sweet things to say when they get that one on one attention.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful until we got to the windbreak, Leah was riding so fast that she lost control of her front wheel, it swerved back and forth and she crashed. I was in front of her and stopped to go back and see what the damage was, as is with most bike crashes there were scraped knees and palms. She immediately stood up and started walking home, knowing I couldn't ride my bike and carry hers I told her to come back and get back on her bike. At this point a car pulled up to stop to see if there was anything they could do to help. I told them we lived just there and that we would be fine. Doesn't that always happen? There are no cars, nothing and as soon as you fall and find yourself in trouble there is the car willing to help, though I never take it. :) I persuaded Leah to get back on her bike and ride the rest of the way home. She did and decided to make that the highlight of her ride when retelling the entire story to her dad. Oh well, when I asked her this morning she didn't mention anything about the crash, the only thing she could think about was how the beetle had "given her the creeps!" haha I loved our bike ride and i loved our alone time together. I also loved the syrup in her voice and especially the moment to look around at, "the world Heavenly Father created for me." Leah's favorite song lately.