She’s such a sweet dog and is amazing around Oscar & Laurel. A couple of days ago, I watched Laurel pull a hair off her coat without even a flinch. That’s a good dog…why is it that we wind up calling her such awful nicknames:
Doodlebug or Doodoobug
Mr. Pickles
Dirtbag
Black Snapper
Baby Mama
Pee Paw
Crazy Cracker

We went shoe shopping for the kids over the weekend and Oscar picked out a pretty sporty looking pair of sneakers for himself. As he was leaving the store with his new shoes on, we noticed how tall he looked and decided to measure him once we got home. Oscar has his own tape measure for the express purpose of checking his height and we quickly discovered that, with the help of the new shoes, he had pushed past the 42 inch mark!

42 inches might seem like a bit of an arbitrary milestone, but its one that has been on Oscar’s mind for over a year now.  See, 42 inches just happens to be the minimum rider height for the two “real” roller coasters at Sea World here in San Diego. Oscar has been aching to get on the roller coasters since he was old enough to understand what they were. Anyone that’s seen his Legoland video, knows that Oscar is a bit of a thrill-seeker.

After discovering the magic of the new shoes, Anna half-jokingly said “you guys should go to Sea World and ride the roller coaster.”  Well, Oscar and I take this sort of thing very seriously, so we did just that. At 6:00pm on Saturday night Oscar and I hopped in the car and headed over to Sea World for Oscar’s inaugural run on the “Journey to Atlantis”.  Unfortunately, in all of our excitement, we sort of forgot how crowded it can be at Sea World on a summer night. It took us about 10 minutes to get into the park and then we spent another 45 minutes in line for the ride.  It wasn’t an ideal situation, but Oscar was extremely patient and didn’t complain once.

You’ll find some video of our ride below. Oscar absolutely loved the entire thing and his reaction was well worth every minute we spent in line.  He’s already planning our next trip (which will be early in the morning before the lines get too crazy). 

Oscar doesn’t know it yet, but we’re heading up to Disneyland in September (our first time with the kids).  I can’t wait to see what he thinks of Space Mountain and the Matterhorn.

Oscar and I must have visited the park a half-dozen times last summer, but hadn’t made it out there yet this year so we decided to make it today’s Family Fun Friday activity. The pool with the play structure goes from 0 to 3 1/2 feet at its deepest and Laurel had a great time floating and crawling around at the shallow end (unfortunately, we were having too much fun with her to get any pictures). Meanwhile, Oscar probably spent a good hour perfecting his water slide technique.

I was a little too excited about our pool adventure and actually got the family there a good 30 minutes before the beginning of the afternoon swim session (Oscar was very patient)

One of about 200 runs down the water slide

Who’s that hunk emerging from the pool?

We didn’t always know that we wanted to have two kids. I honestly believed that I wanted to have just one. When I realized that I wanted to change that plan, it was really all about me. I often heard people say that they wanted to “give” their first borns siblings. I figured that it is the parents doing all the work and there are many great benefits that come from only children, therefore I wasn’t considering Oscar in that regard. Now that Laurel is switching from a sleepy baby to a playful toddler, I have to admit that giving Oscar a sibling is a very nice bonus. They adore each other.

1. The best job I ever had was for VSD’s sister organization in the Bay Area. I know this “flexible volunteering” gig inside and out.

2. My kids are growing up and I’ve got some time to spare. I’m not (and the kids are not) yet ready to return to a steady job outside of the home, however.

3. The blogging is easy! I can contribute posts from home as soon as I finish the project.

And then, to be even more obvious…I chose a gardening project to cover for my first post. That horticulture degree comes in handy every now & then. Even though my knowledge has slipped to an embarrassing low, I can still help volunteers plant marigolds properly at a gardening project!