Tour de La France- June.

Miss Kerri, our neighbor, is super creative and super active with her two boys, James and Andy. She makes us feel pretty lazy 90% of the time. She's also really into the Tour de France. So she decided to host a race of her own- the Tour De La France- at a nearby elementary school of the same name. (She has admitted that she did it solely for the blog post.)
There were 6 participants on the day of the race.

And they're off! Henry had the advantage of being the only one in his age group (the Masters) pointing in the right direction. Which worked out well for him, because he really wanted to win, and James and John are pretty fast. This heat went to him. In the Novice age group, Maddie won with flying colors as she was the only one who would go without someone pushing her.
Miss Kerri was so excited about the race, she even brought ribbons for everyone's bike. Of course, their were yellow ribbons for the winners, but most everyone coveted the pink polka dot ribbons instead.
Miss Juliet also scored big by bringing ice pops. And did we need them, because Friday was the start of a 3 day record breaking heat wave. It broke 100 degrees every day and heat indexes hovered around 110 degrees. To give you an idea of how miserable it was, the overnight lows only reached about 79 degrees.

Mama loves this picture of me and James because of my smile in the background. For some reason, it reminds her very much of our Ohio friend Cole Meyer's earnest smiles.

Check out this sweaty kid. Too bad all the moms are sticklers for safety and required us all to wear our helmets.
John might win the sweatiest head ribbon.
Poor Maddie lost half her ice pop on the hot sidewalk.
I took the "suck the juice approach" so I wouldn't suffer the same fate.
Each kid got two pops, then we were forced to suck on ice cubes if we were still in need of frozen refreshment. Andy didn't let it get in the way of his super hero crime solving.
Lined up for another race. And James is FAST on flat ground. Henry takes a while to get his confidence up when he's riding, but he's steady on the uphill, just like Lance.
Unfortunately, John wiped out on the downhill and had to sit the remainder of Stage 2 out.

After the races, we rode for a little while longer. That's when Henry really got into his groove. As it got hotter and the tiny bit of shade mama was sitting in disappeared, everyone started talking about heading home. And it took a lot of convincing to get Henry to agree to get off his bike. Eventually, the promise of James and Andy coming over to play in our kiddie pool and eat lunch in the backyard convinced him.
We didn't get any pictures of the pool party, but it was a great time. Mama did get this shot of me scooting in my bathing suit. This might be her new favorite picture. Thanks for planning an awesome morning, Miss Kerri!