They Are Watching

Yesterday I took my kids to the gym. Sometimes I wonder what they're getting out of that, you know? The older ones "work out", which seems to consist of a lot of hopping from eliptical to treadmill to stationary bike to various weight machines. The little one goes to the kid zone where they color and hang out.

However, it occurred to me yesterday that the little one is also getting something out of it. When time allows I make time for her to swim after my workout as a reward, and she loves that. And yesterday at the gym I interrupted an active game when I picked her up, and they'd played in the gym, which seemed to thrill B'nut.

So after a 60 minute spin class I was beat, but when we arrived home, B'nut arrived in my room where I was studing Professional Role Development of Nursing. She was with G...

and they were dressed like this:

and they wanted to know if I could take a study break and go for a run.

Yes. Yes I can.

So, G hopped on his new (old) bike, Orange Crush and practiced clipping and unclipping as we ran on a B'nut directed run. I didn't make any plan for the route, she had arrived with her own idea of how far and fast we would run and even planned a route. What can I say? She's my kid. 

I estimate my little B'nut did 1/2 mile of running with me before asking to ride her bike, and G did a solid 20 minutes of cycling yesterday in addition to the very active water gun fight (<~ yes my kids played with water guns, and while I'm not afraid they'll get into a real gun war when they're teenagers, I do worry they'll get expelled from school for talking about a water gun fight...).

And then my oldest C asked if we could get Hot Tamale out (G's "old" new road bike). She tooled around for a bit on that, and also got some vitamin D and sweaty.

It was kind of a perfect day.
It was my kind of perfect day.

Every night we gather around the dinner table and evaluate our day. "What was your favorite part of today?"

B'nut said the run was the best part of her day.
C said going to the gym, "It felt good to work out, it's been a while since I've done that."
G said mastering his clips was "AWESOME".
and me, well I said spending the day with my active and fit kids was my favorite part.

I guess what I'm saying is that my fitness endeavors don't go unnoticed.

And on that note, I wonder what else they notice? I think it's time to evaluate my other habits for a few weeks.