Audrey learns to ride her bike

One of the highlights for me at Christmas was watching Audrey learn to ride her bike without the need for stabilisers/training wheels.

She's had a small Barbie bike for a couple of years and over the Christmas holidays we took the training wheels off it and with the help of one of her friends who showed her what to do she got quite adept at riding. It probably only took her a couple of sessions.

The old bike really was much too small for her though - I'd scoured the small-ads for second hand bikes (especially with the knowledge that a lot of kids would have received new ones for Christmas and therefore may have an old one they wanted to get rid of) but in the end Eli and I took a trip to the 'Green Shed' - at the tip - a huge warehouse where people give stuff to be sold for charity rather than chuck it away. There's so much there from old surf boards, to furniture, toys and a huge rack of old VHS videos!

Unfortunately there wasn't one that suited Eli (he later got given one from his friend Jack who had outgrown his) but we found a bigger Barbie bike for Audrey which was a snip at $10. Audrey's helmet came from the school fete for $1 - yes, the best things in life ARE free - well at least they're $11 all in!

Here's a lovely afternoon the three of us spent at Mount Stromlo bike riding. Eli went for a spill (at the end of the video) but he sustained nothing but a hurt pride.





See also this from just over a year ago