spokesmama.com

While I'm not a researcher, I'm happy to have the opportunity to contribute to research & I think it's a great learning opportunity for my kids to do so as well. When I was still pregnant with Linny, I joined the CHILD Study , along with 3400 other families across Canada, to contribute to research on the prediction, prevention, & treatment of chronic diseases. Bronte hadn't had the chance to be a part of research until recently, when I signed both kids up with the UBC Early Development Research Group. The study we participated in at UBC was completely non-invasive--just sitting at a computer with the researcher & choosing one of two things shown on the screen--but I think it's still useful to teach the kids the value of contributing in a small way to something bigger than themselves that could help other people.

& your rides don't have to be long or even go anywhere--if, at 10pm on a Thursday in April, you discover that you haven't biked anywhere yet, you could just hop on your bike & ride around the block. Even if you, like me, ride most days already, & the challenge won't make a huge difference to your biking habit, it's also a nice little reminder to share our rides with other people. I come across people all the time who just can't envision what bringing two kids to school in the morning looks like on a bike, or how in the world you'd carry groceries for a family of four, or what winter or rainy day biking looks like. Head over to the 30 Days of Biking website, join me & the 1400+ other riders who've pledged to ride every day in the month of April, & start Instagramming/Tweeting/Facebooking your rides with #30daysofbiking!

Open Return is a new booking option that allows you to reserve a car for a full 24 hours, & return it whenever you want within that time. Once you park the car & fob out, you go to the Modo app & end your booking manually, paying for just the time that you used, plus a $3 fee. Using Open Return means if they get tired we can come home early & save a bit on our booking. IF you haven't joined Modo yet, use the code HUBAWARDS2019 to save $50 on drive time when you join!

Most of the time we bike, but once or twice a month, for those times when we're going somewhere that is too far to haul the kids in a cargo bike, or the weather is dreary, or we're planing to carry something massive, it's great to have the option of using a Modo. I'm really used to planning out our car usage, figuring out how long it's going to take us to drive to & from our destination, how long to install boosters seats, unload our stuff, how long we'll want to stay wherever it is we're going. If you haven't heard about it yet, Open Return is a new booking option that allows you to reserve a car for a full 24 hours, & then return it whenever you want within that time. It can be hard to predict in advance how the day is going to go when we're out & about, so using Open Return means we can come home early & save a bit on our booking.