I left my heart #3

We traveled to Golden Gate Park on our second San Francisco day. The park is enormous and contains a History Museum, a Planetarium, an Aquarium, a Natural History Museum, a Japanese Tea Garden, an English Conservatory, extensive outdoor gardens and a lake. The highlight of the day was the unbelievable planetarium show, which actually had me completely enthralled (Abby and Aaron were asleep before the show even started).

Our family loves to bike together, and decided to rent an interesting six person biking contraption thinking we would enjoy a leisurely ride around the lush gardens. We got one thing right--the gardens were beautiful (I took pictures of the dahlia garden below).

What we DIDN'T get right was the leisurely ride.......

Holly wanted to steer the entire time (does this surprise anyone?), and the pedals were too far away for her anyway, so she didn't contribute anything to the forward momentum...

She did, however, provide some good comic relief.

Abby sat in the front basket and was our smiling pixie. She also did not contribute to the forward momentum of our little entourage.....

Victoria actually tried to help, and at one point, SHE was in the back pushing while Aaron and I were pedaling with all of our might. We got some pretty funny remarks yelled at us by passing cars as it looked as though Victoria was pushing the rest of us! One person yelled "Way to put your kids to work!".

On the way back to the rental station we made a wrong turn and ended up cross-countrying it up a back road that was pretty steep. Aaron and I were pushing the three girls and it got to the point where our bodies were parallel to the ground (try to wrap your head around how hilarious that must have been--I couldn't take a picture). While huffing and puffing I turned to Aaron and said " I have now found the perfect analogy for parenting--you and I straining every muscle in our body to carry our children up the hill toward adulthood!". Let's just say we won't be renting a bike like that again until our children are old enough to push US around.