The next size up

It's a holiday weekend, and we can't survive those without some amount of work, some project to do, so today we cleaned out the garage. Maybe the title of this post is referring to the amount of stuff in our garage, and that we really need the next size up to fit it all. But we cleaned up and cleared out, and I've mentioned Freecycle before, but I'll mention it again. We might have had garbage bag after garbage bag to throw away or drop off somewhere, but between Craig's List and Freecycle absolutely everything we were done with is now at a new home with a new family. That's far better than now residing at the dump. Because the other thing to which the above title might refer is toddlers becoming little boys, and needing bigger toys. Bigger play sets, bigger balls, bigger gardening tools, bigger bikes...and now there are a few happy families with smaller children out there. And we can move in our garage.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so out with the smaller and in with the next size up. That is the reference I was making above. In many cases we already had the next size or the next stage up and just got rid of duplicates, but we've been waiting for good weather to replace the clown bike and decided today that if we didn't just go we could find ourselves waiting forever. When I was growing up my grandparents traditionally bought all the grandkids' bikes. It was a moment of pride, a rite of childhood, to go pick out the new bike. I remember a pink bike with a banana seat, and another bike with a white basket. Later it was a rose colored 12 (not 10!) speed that I loved for years.

My parents wanted to continue that tradition and today we all went to pick out Calvin's new bike in the next size up. I can't say the weather was good, or that the sun was shining, but I can say that Calvin quickly and easily zeroed in on the bike for him. We brought it home. Calvin, dad, and grampa assembled it. When he tried it out he looked alarmingly grown up to me. And that's when the tornado sirens went off. Like I said, these days, if we waited for good weather to do anything we'd be waiting an awfully long time.