Wednesday afternoon I won tickets to the Mariners game…for Wednesday night.
I called home.

Does Abby want to go with me?
Abby, do you want to go with Daddy to the baseball game?
N.uhhh…well…ok.

Her vote of confidence was overwhelming but when she was apprised of the potential for cotton candy and hot dogs she was all-in like Templeton.

She wore her pink Mariners hat, pink Mariners pants, her sporty shoes, and a blue windbreaker…Mariners of course.
We got there early and then waited an inordinately long time for a train. I am not kidding, something like 15 minutes or more on the wrong side of the tracks makes the cotton candy on the other side equivalent to a christmas that will never come. We procured our hot dogs and watched batting practice from our seats in right field. We weren’t back again until the 8th.
Since the M’s aren’t terribly good right now there were a lot of available seats and we sat in all of them. Every half inning we switched seats. At the top of the 300 section; now on the rail; 20 rows back from the 3rd base dugout; now we’re in Ferris Bueller land.
Two servings of cotton candy (blue and pink), one hot dog, exactly 1/2 of a peanut (salted and unshelled – “echhh! THAT is nasty!”), one homerun, 8 baseball cards, and a whole lot of seating changes we cheered the M’s to a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox.
Somewhere about the 4th or 5th inning, near the Beuller seats, Abby said:

I didn’t know it was gonna be THIS much fun!

Emma fell down today. She has fallen before but this time she hit her face.
We have noticed a couple of things of late.
1) She is navigating stairs and other obstacles with relative ease of late, and she is going faster and faster because of her confidence.
2) She is falling down more.

Today was a perfect storm of a composite driveway (crumbly surface), a steep grade, biggish shoes, and a confident two year old.

It all added up to this.

A scraped cheek, a split lip, some scraped knees, and well…her pride is still pretty much intact.
She cried of course but overall, she recovered and was back to business as usual before the day was over.
It seems that she has QUITE the pain threshold.

You know your car has been parked (no gas added) for a while when this happens.

About mid April Petey’s engine light came on and she started running roughly. I parked her and since then have logged about 500 miles on my bike, Draftless, commuting to work. Add in a couple of weekend rides and I am probably over 600.
This week alone I have commuted an all-time high 140 miles.
All of this is to celebrate Bike To Work Month, and to get ready for the Seattle To Portland classic double century ride in July.
You can see my stats (along with the rest of my company) online for a while at http://www.cbcef.org/contest/btw_report_riderstripsdaysmiles.cfm?contest=13&orgid=2038