Picnic and a bike ride

Emily had the day off for Kindergarten Round-up and the weather was beautiful.  After making my weekly stops in Waterloo, the kids & were going to go to the Phelps Youth Pavilion.  Unfortunately, we discovered it isn't open on Monday. :o(  We made the best of it, though, and still enjoyed our picnic lunch by the river. 

While spreading out our lunch, we discovered the remains of quarter-sized hail that had fallen just before we got to town.

Then we played on the equipment by the new splash pad.  Sometime we'll have to come back when it's actually warm enough to enjoy the water part!

After returning home we decided to venture out on a bike ride.  I loaded up all the bikes in the van and drove to the Waverly Rail Trail.  This was the first time each of us were on our own bike.  We made a very slow trek a mile down the trail to the first tunnel.  We stopped for a granola bar break and then headed back to the van.  Lincoln got going a little too fast on the hill down from the tunnel and bailed off his bike when he got scared.  This resulted in a scraped up back and face, but he was tough and got right back on his bike.  I hope we can do this many more times in the future!

When we got home from the bike ride, Emily decided she was going to write a book titled Iowa Discoveries: The Cedar River.  She made an impressive cover and then wrote a page of facts gleaned from a Wikipedia article on the Cedar River.