Confession: Sometimes I lie to my kid

This weekend, we were at a stale mate. Andrei was getting antsy from being cooped up all day, and his attempts at entertaining himself with Disney movies were doing more harm than good. He's not a sit still and pay attention to a movie kind of kid, and he usually only turns to tv as a last resort after he's already cranky and bored to the point of no return.
In trying to figure out what to do with this cranky, bored, somewhat belligerent child, his father and I realized that the weather was so nice that we ought take advantage of it. There was a cool breeze, the sun was shining, and the river was running high. It takes about an hour and a half just to ride down the mountain by our house, which Luis and I decided was just what the family needed.
I was really sneaky about it, though. I didn't want to just barge in to the boy's room turn off the tv and tell him that we were going. That never works well. Power of suggestion and reverse psychology don't really work either. If he's bored enough to attempt watching a movie during the middle of the day, he's usually already gotten himself in trouble pestering the dogs and neighbors several times, and cranky enough that he'll argue with anything I say out of principal.
Instead, I went into the garage and threw the electrical breaker that powers our 2 upstairs bedrooms. 
It worked like a charm. He immediately came out complaining that the power was off and asking me what was going on. I know it's bad to be dishonest with your kids, but I just told him that his tv, dvd player, fan, and clock could possibly have overloaded the circuits and that there wasn't anything I could do about it for at least an hour until the circuits cooled down. He accepted that answer and for lack of anything else to do, somewhat reluctantly agreed to join us on a bike ride.
So we packed up our bikes into the back of my truck and drove 15 miles up Provo Canyon. Up in Glen Canyon Park we unloaded our bikes and rode the trail back down the mountain, through town, and ended up at our house. That's one of the perks of living a few blocks from the river trail- we can get pretty much anywhere we want to in town avoiding main roads. 
It was sublime.
We spent the afternoon viewing things like this, and stopping to play at the multiple parks that dot the length of the trail.

We excitedly talked and joked about the gorgeous scenery, the beautiful weather, and the thrill of zipping down the mountain on our bikes.
When we returned home, I secretly restored power to his room, but somehow he decided that he'd prefer to eat lunch then play outside instead.
Non, je ne regrette rien