updated: guess

Ok, well a few of you emailed me with your guess and a few commented. They were good guesses, but no one got it right!

They were trying to pull the tree down using the bike. Ok, kidding. They weren't doing that either.

But....

what they were doing was trying to straighten the forks on the bike. Joseph apparently hit something really hard last summer, although he claims not to remember (maybe that's good for us). Anyhow, the forks on his bike were literally bent and almost touching the frame. In fact, his front tire reminded me of a unicycle, considering how straight it was under his bike. We thought he would need a new bike this year, but thanks to Grandpa Craig and Mike, they used a chain, a tree, a pipe, and a lot of strength to pull it back. And now it looks like it was never bent. Yay!