Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I had my sister’s old bike with a sparkly yellow banana seat and streamers on the handlebars. I miss that bike. My dad taught me, and I still remember how great it felt to finally ride without the training wheels.

Like maybe… Stephanie!?! Congratulations Stephanie, the balance bike is all yours! I’ll be emailing you shortly, you’ll have 24 hours to respond.

Many many thanks again to Outdoor Daily Deals for sponsoring the giveaway. And thanks to everyone who took the time to enter. I wish I was Oprah and could give you all a balance bike…and a sportsmobile… This giveaway has reminded me why I don’t watch sports. It’s too hard on me when everyone can’t be a winner. Not that your not all winners… it’s just… you know what I mean. You know you can always make your own slightly less cool version of a balance bike, right?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading everyones comments. Learning to ride a bike sounds like it was a major milestone (albeit at times traumatic) for many of you, thank you so much for sharing your stories.

Unfortunately I don’t remember anything about the day I learned to ride a bike. But I’ll never forget the day my son learned; I screamed so loud in my excitement I nearly sent him flying off the sidewalk in a panic. I was so proud, emotional containment was apparently just not an option.

Oh, and did I mention I was going to turn your answers into an informal not very scientific study? I did. Actually pretty interesting… Click to enlarge.

Note: The winner was chosen using the number generator at random.org.

**GIVEAWAY CLOSED! Winner will be announced Friday, September 15.**

If your fairly new to the site you may have missed a post I did way back in January called “The Power of the Balance Bike“. It’s such a fine product, I’m pleased and honored to be giving away a strider for our first ever Outsidemom giveaway!

I would love to take all the credit for this, but the giveaway is sponsored by Outdoor Daily Deals, it’s entirely their fault you have a chance to win this bike. They’re a facebook page that posts one outdoor item every day that you can purchase for 25-50% off. Emphasis on the ONE ITEM a day. They don’t drive you crazy by spamming your facebook feed with “deals”. They’ve been awesome to work with, and I highly recommend the “like“.

How do you enter my Outsidemom giveaway? All you have to do is leave a comment on the blog. Tell me how old you were when you learned to ride a bike, who taught you,  and whether the experience involved a banana seat.

And, of course, we would love it if you shared this opportunity with friends, but we completely understand if you don’t because it lowers your chances. You can always make it up to us by sharing something with them later (wink wink).

The winner will be announced Friday September 16th here on this very blog. Other rules below, check ’em out before entering. Good luck! (more…)

Notice anything new about the website… Like maybe on the sidebar? Maybe a graphic that looks like this one to the left?

I’m sure a lot of you are already familiar with Nature Rocks, but for those who aren’t, allow me to explain. — It’s a campaign that strives to get children and families back into the outdoors. Their belief is that nature produces the benefits of happier, healthier and smarter children and families.

I agree.

Which is why I found it fitting to volunteer as a Nature Rocks Ambassador. It gives me a chance to be involved in a national program that essentially believes what I believe.

I’m keeping their ‘button’ on my site so that readers can have easy access to their Website, which I would say has three main functions: (more…)

Last week, after frantically finishing up a bunch of contract work (yes, I have a day job), getting stuff together for pre-school and finishing a blog post, I stood up, looked around my office (which had pretty much turned into a toy room) and realized something… When I started this blog I promised myself that it would never cut into my family time, never cause me to shirk my other duties and never, heaven forbid, cut into our outside time. I realized my life was actually getting to that point.

I needed help. And I found it.

Allow me to introduce a new member to the OutsideMom team: Olivia.

I toyed around with a few titles for her, ‘idea-bouncer,’ ‘schedule-maker,’ ‘sanity-checker,’ ‘coolest-girl-ever,’ but in the end I settled on ‘Contributor.’ Olivia will be contributing posts a few times a month.

I wanted to introduce you to Olivia before her first post tomorrow, so asked I her to send me some bullet points to get me going. Her first round of bullet points I found hilarious, and I’m sure were not meant to make it into the final version of the bio, but guess what? It did. Here are her bullet points, and here is me decoding them for you. (more…)