These past few days have been so sad in our house. Even Ale has been asking me what's wrong and "Why are you so sad mama." Sam's pesky absence is palpable in our home. We will do something this weekend when Ke'ano is back from his mom's to commemorate Sam. I'm sad we couldn't take his body home and bury it ourselves.

In the midst of loss there has been celebration. Ale can officially ride a two wheeler. David took the pedals off his bike a couple weeks ago as a cheap alternative to the increasingly more popular balance bikes. I'm glad we didn't invest in a balance bike as I'd originally wanted. This was much more cost effective (of course it helps that David is obsessed with bikes and knows how to do all this stuff too). In the course of a couple weeks, not even getting out every day, Ale learned the most important aspect of riding on two wheels--maintaining balance. (It helped that his BFF, Miles, started riding a two wheeler a couple weeks ago too). He started asking for David to put his pedals back on a week ago and David finally did it last night. We took the bike out this morning for a quick trial run. Armed with video to capture the first moments we didn't even have a chance because Ale just took off. No instructions. No holding the seat and running beside him. No picking him up after falling over. He just road on down the street as if he'd been doing it all along. So amazing!