Spring Break at the Coast

We headed to the coast for a couple of days for Spring Break to play on the beach and to sightsee. First, we stopped off at a little lake to let Parker practice his swimming skills. It was his first time swimming, and the water was really, really cold. But I think he enjoyed himself.



Then we went to Florence, where the sand dunes meet the ocean. It's really neat to see people riding dirt bikes right onto the beaches. Parker absolutely loves the sand, he runs around like a crazy dog the whole time we're there. Now we realize that taking Owen places really limits the activities we can do. It was a little rainy and windy the second day, so we couldn't beach comb as much as would have liked to.




Later on, we went to dinner in Newport at this nice beachside restaurant. We watched the sun set as we were eating, it was very pretty and romantic. Overall, it was a great little vacation from the norm.

Water Baby?

We took Owen swimming for the first time yesterday. He really enjoyed the water and didn't fuss at all. The whole time he seemed not to know what to think about it so he just stayed still. Like any good parents, we dunked him underwater. Getting ready, going swimming, showing our "off season" bodies, and driving back home with wet pants was worth it in order to see the following seven seconds of video.

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Parker's favorite place

Parker just loves when he gets to go play with his friends at the dog park. It's great for us too, because he wears off some, I repeat, some of his energy. It's basically just a section of a huge park that is fenced off where dogs run and play together while the owners make uncomfortable small talk about each others dogs, or the weather. The area is pretty big, maybe 2-3 acres of grass, mud, trees and picnic tables. Every now and then, some naive family thinks it's a good idea to have a picnic lunch there, but they soon find out that the picnic tables and anything on those tables really belong to the dogs. They also have sprinklers and little doggie swimming pools to cool off in, and they get used quite often. There are usually between 10 and 30 dogs there on any given day and they are all going crazy, chasing each other and wrestling. I once saw this old lady get taken out by a Great Dane that wasn't watching where he was running. He hit her from behind and she went flying through the air. Luckily, she wasn't seriously hurt. It can be a hectic place. Here are some cool pictures that Blake snapped during the craziness that is the dog park.

This German Shepard was chasing Parker until Parker tripped over his own paws and got run over.

Stopping for a drink.
Here they go again.




Finally tuckered out.

One of my friends invited me to play in a flag football tournament this past Saturday. My only experience playing football is one season of flag football. Quite frankly, I like playing football but I don't know much about plays. I'm also in really bad shape since I haven't been exercising. We got to play at Autzen Stadium. It was really cool playing on the turf. We played three games yesterday and for the most part I played a marginal role, but I did manage to bring down a long touchdown pass while being covered by 3 defenders. I felt like Randy Moss for 10 seconds. I'm paying the price today though. My body is really sore. I have been riding my bike to school a lot this past week so maybe I'll lose a few pounds before summer.

Don't blink, you might miss me.

This is pretty much how I felt the whole time.

Owen has been having a tough time getting filled up on formula alone, so our pediatrician told us we could start feeding him rice cereal. So here are some pictures of his first "real food." At first he really didn't know what to do, but after awhile he really started to eat fast. Sadly, I had already taken the camera away when he finally got the hang of it.