Sunday afternoon

Damon has been bugging Nick for weeks... maybe months... to fix his bike (which needed a new tube for one of the tires). So, yesterday morning, Nick and Damon took the bike and a bucket o' tools to the front porch and fixed the tire.

Later in the morning, driving back from the convenience store down the road, Nick spotted an "All Free!" sign in someone's yard... and the yard was full of old, rusted bikes. Naturally, Nick decided he needed TWO, so he came home with two old, rusted bikes in the back of his truck. He spent another hour or so fixing/cleaning one of the bikes.

Then, yesterday afternoon, Damon's friend Matt came over, with his bike.

Our house is conveniently located just down the street from the middle and high schools. So, Nick took Damon and Matt to the schools, thinking there just MIGHT be a flat parking lot for the boys to ride their bikes.

Avery and I decided to put Comet on his leash and follow the boys to the school parking lot.

We approached the middle school and there is, in fact, a HUGE, magnificently FLAT parking lot in front of the school. But of course, the boys weren't there. Comet, Avery, and I continued around the side of the building and found the boys... heading downhill, of course.

Nick pedals back to where we're approaching and says, "Mommy, you just missed it, by about 3 minutes..." Damon apparently took his first "spill" on the bike. Later I found out that Damon didn't really take a spill... Damon FLEW through the air like Superman after his bike hit a SIGN. Mommy is sooooo glad she missed that; I'm sure I would be scarred for life. But, luckily, Damon escaped with no injuries.

So, I lectured Nick about taking the boys DOWN the hill when there was a perfectly good flat parking lot (which was the whole point of taking them to the school to ride in the first place!). And we continued down the hill, around the schools, and back UP the hill on the other side to our neighborhood.

Halfway back up the hill, the rusted chain on Nick's bike says "SNAP!" and leaves Nick walking the death trap the rest of the way. Also, halfway up the hill, the sky turns really dark and the wind picks up and we KNOW it's just a matter of time before we all get really, really wet.

About a block from our house, it begins to rain... no, it begins to POUR. And the wind is howling. Comet wanted to hunker down under a tree we were passing... Avery was holding onto my hand, whining and crying and screaming, "Mommy, it's a tornado!!" I assured Avery it was NOT a tornado and dragged her the rest of the way home in the pouring down rain.

At some point, trudging through the wind and rain, dripping wet, pulling an unwilling dog with one arm and a whining 4 year old with the other, I found the humor in the situation... and I tipped my head back and laughed, for no apparent reason. Damon was next to me on his bike and he, too, started laughing. We both laughed the whole way down the alley behind our house. (Nick had run ahead because our car windows were down, and he was freaking about that; and Matt had turned off to go to his house to get a drink.) Avery continued to whine and cry, although I heard giggles escaping every now and then, just because laughter is contagious (she didn't think anything about this situation was amusing, I can assure you!).

So, finally, we all made it back to the house. We sat on our covered porch, dripping, and watched the summer storm that we'd been caught in just moments before.

Today, I was reading through the new Woman's Day magazine that came to my mailbox this morning, and I saw this on p. 18 (cheap ways to cool down and beat the heat this summer): "Play in the rain during a blink-and-you'll-miss-it summer shower."

Check.