The Art of Racing Down the Road

Happy Thursday readers.  Team LIAYF is back home and recovering nicely from our 4 day trip to the Oregon Coast this past weekend.  We loaded up our bikes and left last Friday.  After getting a late start, caught behind two accidents, and getting two desperate calls from my work amidst choppy cell coverage while on the drive, things were finally going better as we approached Astoria, Oregon. 
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It was at that point I thought it would be a good idea to pull over and pick up a nice shiny sticker for Lukas.  Yes It was a bit on the expensive side at $113 but nothing is too good for my son, and it did have the Washington State Patrol logo on it.  Plus the sticker also came with a personal visit and informational talk from a very friendly officer.  You just can't beat that....which, subsequently is why I will most likely just mail in the payment for it soon enough.

I'm going to call it a Learning Sticker.  Especially since not 10 minutes before we picked it up we were pointing out to Lukas what happens to people who drive to fast, as we passed a  couple of unfortunate souls stopped on the side of the winding highway.

I think I actually said, "They have to spend their money on a ticket now, rather than toys".  Hey, at least I got my son a cool sticker.   And, of course, a chance to show him that daddy can gracefully accept the consequences when he breaks the rules.

In other news, the LIAYF family participated in the 28th annual 'National Night Out Against Crime' on Tuesday, otherwise known as our Block Party.  As usual, it was a lot of fun and a great chance to hang out and drink beer talk with our neighbors about local collaboration on crime prevention. 

Mrs. LIAYF and I gave up our title as block watch captains last year because we assumed we were not doing enough and another, less distracted, family would do a better job of organizing the event for our block.  Yeah.....apparently we weren't doing such a bad job after all.  That being said, no matter how organized our block could have been, we still would have been shown up by the next block over who actually had a band play for the 2nd year in a row.  Those show-offs are our blocks Newman. 

During the event, the streets were closed off to through traffic, which allowed all the kids (including Lukas and all the boys from the Yard of the Flies) to ride up and down the block on their bikes for most of the evening.   At one point, after zipping by several time on his bike mentioning something about Lightning McQueen, Lukas laid it down in the middle of the street and sat there.  When I approached to see if he was okay, he said "I'm tired of being a famous race car."

By the end of the night, due to all the run-ins with all the other kids, our little guy was sporting several scrapes and bruises, but he had yet to come running to us upset or crying.  That all changed as it started to get dark out though.  We heard him yelling and whining, and as we looked up he was running down the street towards us, arms in the air.  As I reached him, I asked what had happened. 

"I saw something terrible!" he exclaimed.  "What was it Buddy?" I responded, concerned.  "I saw a kitty without a collar back there!"  Was his frantic reply.

I couldn't help but let out a big laugh.  "I think it'll be ok" Mrs. LIAYF assured him with a smile.

And with that we all decided to call it a night.