Surreal

Surreal: adjective. 1) having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic

Today we had an adventure. We rode our bikes to the edge of our neighborhood. Looking like a contestant on the 80's video game Frogger, I directed the three big kids across the street, then ran the 2 smaller kids across, then ran back across and rode my bike across. The greenway trails are close to our house, yet have seemed inaccessible due to the highway and the difficulty in getting 6 bikes there in our car. Today we took a chance. And it was worth it.

We rode out bikes up and down the hills. The sky was a weird gray color. Rain was coming, but it would be later. The dullness of the sky made everything else seem so surreal. The colors were brighter. The sound of the insects making their music was more intense. The wind on my face was more refreshing. The leaves scattered the trees with different colors of orange, red and yellow, and they appeared to be dropped randomly from the sky by God himself.

"This is the best day of my life." Justine says this every single day. It is so refreshing that it takes so little to make it the best day of her life. But then Josh agreed, "Yes the best day ever." I was stunned by the perfection of it all. He has never said that anything was the best day ever... not the day we met, not the day he came to America, not the numerous trips to the very expensive amusement park. This was a very special moment for all of us.

Riding our bikes on the trails with the leaves falling silently around us was definitely a surreal moment. Just like all moments in my life, it quickly came to a screeching, non-calming moment when Justine forgot how to use her brakes and went screaming down a huge hill with her feet dragging the ground. Eventually she flew over the handle bars and lay in a pile of the leaves I was just admiring. She was screaming and crying, "I can't ride my bike back. I can't even walk." Great. I didn't bring a phone or anything. I looked her over and miraculously there wasn't even a scratch on her. I conned her into getting back on her bike. She made it around one more corner and then ran over a snake. Instead of just going on, she turned around and around the snake on her bike, screaming like someone had cut her head off. I finally got her away from the snake and it slithered away... probably more scared of us than we of it. We got back to riding and finally caught up with the big kids. Jaiden was crying uncontrollably. Josh had told her that I left them there and they were lost forever. (Yes, he is a zebra with many different stripes, but that's a different story) We kept on riding and decided it was time to go home. Those beautiful gray clouds which caused such a serene effect on me earlier, opened up and it started raining on us. The children began to whine and complain about the hills we now had to climb to get home. We made it through another episode of Frogger and finally made it home thirsty and exhausted.
It was the best day ever.