New bikes...climbing high...church

Last weekend was another wet one here which restricted the activities we could do. On Saturday we went to the outdoor store Anaconda to check out some new bikes I was thinking of buying for the kids. They happened to be 25% off so we decided to buy them. We bought kids size mountain bikes (24 inch wheels) with alloy frame/parts, front shocks and 21 speed Shimano gears. Jasmine is only just big enough to ride her bike but at the rate both James and Jasmine are growing it won't be long before she fits the bike better. I also decided to buy a new bike for myself since my old bike had all sorts of problems with badly worn out gear levers, chain and rear wheel cluster. It was better value to get a new bike rather than repair the old one.

While at Anaconda the kids had a lot of fun climbing the cylindrical shaped rock wall they have in the store. James made it to the top at different parts of the wall and Jazz got about half way up. I had never tried rock wall climbing so I decided to give it a bit of a go myself. I was surprised how challenging it was. My poor flexibility hampered me a bit and I was relying too much on pulling myself up with my arms rather than using my legs. The ropes are setup with a mechanical belay system. When I was half way up I was suddenly hit by fear, realising how high I was and that I would be relying on some kind of mechanical system to lower me back down again. I had no choice but to continue to the top since the kids were watching and I didn't want to wimp out. Once at the top, letting go was a real challenge but the belay system worked a treat and lowered me down with ease.

Later on Saturday afternoon Jasmine went to her friend Jessica's ten pin bowling birthday party. I saw some of the kids bowl when I came to pick her up and it looked like a difficult task for the kids to get the down the aisle. They were running a bit overtime possibly due to the time is took for each of their bowls to travel down and bump some pins over.

On Sunday Jasmine and I went for a ride on our new bikes. At first Jasmine was quite nervous about riding the bike since it was such a massive step up from her little 16 inch kiddies bike which she was really way to big for. We just rode around on the school multi-purpose courts so she could get used to riding and changing the gears on a nice flat surface without anything to crash into. Thankfully we didn't have any stacks and it was a positive experience for her. She is still a little nervous handling the new bike but her confidence and skills are building and she enjoys riding it.

While Jasmine and I were riding our bikes Lani and James went to church to witness Nathaniel Tang getting ordained. James has expressed an interest in going to church from time to time in the past and after attending church has again expressed an interest in the idea. James does like to read, I might borrow him a book from the library on world religions to help broaden his knowledge on the subject. On Sunday night we went to Mark Tang's house for dinner with his family including his parents Bill and Meg who were visiting.