Yesterday started off with the typical morning bickering, followed by the discovery of hot pink ink in the cream colored carpet, followed by my head doing a 360. Middle son, Dustin, was trying to clean it by rubbing it around until it was the size of a frying pan! To make it worse, I had to punish him our first sunny-summer morning where I had nothing but bonding and bliss planned for us. As I've posted before, parenting is a real-life rollercoaster. Fast forward an hour and I'm out on the riding mower and in the corner of my eye see my five year old , Dakota, whizz by on his brothers bike with no training wheels, followed by my oldest, Josh, running beside him with his hand on his back and a huge grin. I quickly turned the mower and stopped just in time to see him whizz by - this time with three barefoot brothers running behind ready to catch him. Proud? Yes! Jealous that it wasn't me running beside? Yes!