The Bike Rodeo

At the very end of January, we were able to attend a bike rodeo at our neighborhood park. We've attended bike rodeos in the past, but they've always been large scale events at one of the huge parks and the entire city was invited to attend at once. This year, the city held smaller bike rodeos at the various parks throughout the city and invited the surrounding neighborhoods to attend. 

We love the bike rodeos. Free food, live band and the local PD fitting the kiddos for helmets and teaching them bike safety. And at the end, they do a drawing for some free bikes. In the past, the events have been so large that we didn't really have a chance at winning a free bike. This time around, I felt like our chances were a little bit better with the smaller crowd, so we stuck around for the whole event, just in case one of our tickets was a lucky one. 

We enjoyed some free hot dogs, sodas, chips and ice cream for lunch. The kiddos each took a turn doing the bike course with the PD and the girls got new helmets. We walked through the sponsor tents and played on the blow up slide and bounce houses. Then it was time for the bike raffle. We gathered round, tickets in hand and the first number drawn was Man Cub's. He was so excited and ran right up and hopped on the brightest coloured bike up there. It was a little big for him, but I couldn't convince him to take the smaller one and the police officer running the raffle just shrugged and laughed. 

Ticket number two was drawn... and matched the numbers on Beebs' ticket. She picked a pink and purple bike. Sunshine mentioned how funny it would be if she won a bike, but as she had gotten her dream bike just a year ago, she knew she didn't need a new one. We stuck around for the end of the drawing so the kiddos could be in a group photo with the other winners, and wouldn't you know it, Sunshine's ticket number was the last one drawn. We won bikes 1, 2, and 6. Sunshine thanked the man drawing tickets, but told him she had a great bike and asked him to pick a new ticket so another child would have a chance at winning. That girl... she is one of the sweetest children I know. She was just excited that her ticket was drawn, even if she didn't go home with a new bike. 

The walk home was an adventure. We only live 3/4 miles from the park, but with the stroller and two bikes more than we walked there with, it was tricky! But we made it home and we were all grins for the rest of the day at having won three bikes. Unfortunately it was too late to buy a Powerball ticket... I was feeling pretty lucky!