Another birthday weekend

The weather has been amazing this past week, so we wrapped up Spring Break/Gareth's birthday week by letting the kids set up the tent in the backyard. It's just cool enough overnight still that you end up being grateful for the sleeping bag. Also, the birds in our yard are really loud in the early morning hours. 

We started Gareth's birthday mid-morning since his big ask was a skateboard. Uncle Daniel came over and they went out to a skate shop and got the helmet/padding needed to prevent a PICU admission. Then we were ready to head to the school blacktop to start practicing.

Dinner was smoked gouda mac 'n cheese with roasted broccoli followed up by chocolate cheesecake. A few very simple alterations to make everything gluten free. I'm 0/2 on getting the chocolate cheesecake to not crack. And I think I might be burning the Oreo cookie base ever so slightly as well. But it all tastes good anyway!

We let the kids sleep in the tent again since we hadn't got around to taking it down. Mal was wanting to move out there permanently, but we said no - such mean parents. Gareth described it as the best weekend ever.

Gareth spent most of the weekend skateboarding, but I got out for a bike ride on Sunday afternoon. It was definitely a sunscreen-worthy afternoon, hitting almost 80 degrees. Lovely day for a half lake loop - 26 miles. We'll gradually work back up to the full lake loop again. We're planning to hit the Iron Horse trail with Ryan in the next few weeks - will have the kids meet us at the top of the trail/Snoqualmie tunnel with a picnic!