What's new with Owen

We realize that 87.6% of you come here just to catch up on Owen. So, here are some updates.

Mr. Owen gets around like a crazy man these days. He never sits still. As soon as he reaches his destination, he sees something from his new vantage point and moves towards that. While he is capable of the "normal" on all 4's crawling, he prefers to scoot around like a wounded soldier - on his belly using the left arm and right leg to push himself along. He's get at cruising - pulling himself up on things and walking along them, mostly furniture. We had a few side tables come spilling over during this process. Also, all of Tara's pretty decorative things have all been repositioned so that they're not broken.

Words and sounds are developing quickly. Right now the only consistent word is Dada, but we've recently added some new ones - Ba for ball, Da for dog, Mama for mama. He barks when you ask what a dog says and makes roughly the same sound for a monkey. Of course, he's been making his truck noise for 2-3 months now.

Still has the same two bottom teeth, but we think he's working on some new ones, possibly up top.

He has developed a sense of humor and really gets a kick out of certain actions. He likes to feed Ryan at dinner time. He likes to hold his big ball over his head and drop it. He loves to make funny noises with mom and dad. He enjoys being tickled and has a really big chuckle once he gets going.

He definitely takes after his mother in a lot of ways, particularly with his strong will and affinity for biting (ask Gale about Tara's biting as a kid).

One of Owen's favorite things is for us to actually throw the ball in the air for him. He gets all excited and flaps his arms and makes these funny faces.

First trip to the beach. It was a lake beach, not the ocean, but he had fun playing in the sand.

Talking to the horses with Papaw.

The Day After the Draft

This was the Sunday morning after the football draft. Owen was reading the sports section trying to find out if two guys with the same last name have ever been taken 1 & 2 before.

This post is obviously by Ryan because Tara has no clue what that previous sentence is about.

Why We Haven't Been Blogging

So outside of the normal evil influences that keep us from blogging (long day with Owen/work, end of season television, etc) there have been some extenuating circumstances lately that have kept us from regularly updating everyone on the adventures of their favorite little boy.


The main thing has been our class. We've been taking a seminary class. Ryan took it for graduate credit and Tara took it for a certificate. It's been a lot of work all semester, but here at the end it all piled up. We wrote a 29 page term paper, Ryan took a final and we had to play catch up on our quizzes since we missed a week due to vacation. That has really consumed our last two weeks. But it's over...Hallelujah! It was a great class, but it's always a good feeling when you're done.


We've also been doing some travelling - yes, again. Last weekend was Ryan's sister Tara's high school graduation (yes, another Tara for those of you that didn't know that). She was the valedictorian of Lakeside High School. She did very good on her speech and was even spotted performing several strange dance routines at inopportune times - and yes, they're all on video. We'll try to get some picture of that up soon. Way to go, Ta! We're proud of you...even if you are going to LSU. Also, we're going back to Louisiana again this weekend to hang out on Toledo Bend. But after that we're here - for a whole month until we go to Minneapolis for Ben's wedding.

And in between all of that, Monday nights have become socializing night. We've either gone to someone's house or had people over every Monday for the last month and even threw in one Friday. That's been a lot of fun. If you want to hang out with us, let us know and we'll schedule a Monday night with ya!

And since 76.2% of you only come for the pictures, here's a picture of Owen and Sadie when Sadie came over to play recently. We told him it's improper to show that much leg to the girls, but Sadie didn't seem to mind.

From the Mother of a Curious 10-month-old

So I walked into the bathroom this morning to find Owen with both hands in the toilet having a hayday.

A good mother would have immediately removed him from the toilet, washed his hands and told him that it is yucky and not to do it again.

But I instead ran to get the camera and laughed for several minutes while watching him play. (To my credit, I did wash his hands and tell him no no after the incident was over).

Vacation

Finally, our vacation is on the blog.

We spent 8 days in Costa Rica. The first 3 were our action packed days staying at the base of Arenal Volcano, one of the world's most active volcanoes. While were were there we:

Went on a zip line over and through the jungle. When I say over, I really mean over - the first big line was approx. 1000 feet above the ground! One line was over 1/2 mile long and you got up to 45-50 mph. It was awesome! Tara says it the coolest thing she's ever done.

We also went white water rafting, which is where we got banged up. We weren't in the raft 30 seconds and went down an 8'-10' drop and we both flew out. Ryan hit his eye and then his knee on a rock and Tara landed right on her arm and then on top of Ryan. But our guide was great and he had us both right back into the boat. There were so many rapids that it was the end of the trip before we realized we were hurt. It was a beautiful trip. We even saw a sloth in a tree.

Then we hiked to the volcano and watched it spew car-size boulders. You could hear them before you could see them. The clouds covered the top at night time so we couldn't see the lava, but we did go watch the boulders at night, which was pretty cool to watch the streaks of red going down the side of the volcano.

There are hot springs there with all these fancy resorts that you could pay big bucks to get in to. But Ryan found a tip on the internet just before we left and it worked out. Just downstream from the resorts is a bridge and you can hike down and there's the hot spring, totally free. So, we went down and lay in the spring in the jungle just like the people that live there do and didn't spend a dime.

And on the way out of town we hiked to a really pretty waterfall.

After all that activity we needed some rest, so we drove to the beach on the Pacific side to a town called Tamarindo. We stayed at an awesome hotel, Capitan Suizo. We could go on and on about how much we liked this hotel, but we'll spare you. On the premises were a family of howler monkeys and two baby orphan monkeys, 4-5 iguanas, raccoons, skunks...all kinds of critters. We walked up on a skunk on our front porch one night, which kinda startled us. We spent the next 4 days relaxing by the pool and playing in the water. We did drive about 30 minutes to two other beaches that are famous for surfing and did some boogie-boarding (we were probably being laughed at by all the surfers, but we didn't care). And we kayaked out to an island one day. But other than that, just chilling. We each read two books. We would just lay around and then walk to town along the beach at night to watch the sunset and eat supper.

We would recommend this trip to anyone. It was easy and a lot of fun. And the food is great! So, that's our 8 day vacation in a nutshell. Pictures are below.

The view from the front porch of our cabin.

Ready, set...

Gooooooo!

This is at the end of our white water trip. Didn't take the digital with us on that one, so this is all the proof we have!

Our injuries. You can't see Ryan's eye here, but it turned purple and then yellow for a few days. Another picture will follow where you can see Tara's bruise a few days later. It's just now going away after two weeks.

Some of the monkeys at the beach hotel. Howler monkeys don't sound like what we think a monkey sounds like. It's almost like a bark.

We had some "friends" that would come hang out next to us by the pool. You can see the ocean in the background.

Our room.
This is actually a restaurant on the beach. Can you see the surfer in the middle of the picture.

This is the main activity of the 4 days at the beach.

We're Back...

Pictures and stories to follow...we're just not promising when! ;-)

We had a great time. We managed to come back with only a slightly black eye, badly bruised arm and a banged up knee. That ought to get a few of you to come back!

Bittersweet Vacation

In a few hours, Tara and I will get on a plane for 8 days of vacationing in Costa Rica. And boy, are we excited. But, it's also the first time that we'll both be away from Owen, and he away from us, for such an extended period. So, there's a little anxiety. We're sure that once we've landed tomorrow, picked up our car and are headed towards Arenal it'll melt away. But, for now, it's not too fun leaving out little buddy.

And no, don't call CPS. Tara's mom is staying here with him. But with a new crawler she's going to have her hands full! Hopefully when we get back she'll have everything childproofed! If you think about it, give Gale a call this week. And we'll talk to you all on the flip side.

Crawling

Well, it's not yet a perfected artform, but Mr. Owen has devised a way to get around by himself. He usually has a very red forehead, knees and left elbow from the carpet burn.

Tree Planting

Last week Ryan's office went and planted 8 trees in the park down the road from their office. While the boys acted like it was soooo hard for 15 people to plant 8 trees, the girls sat under much larger trees and talked about how cool trees are! Neither of those is exactly true, but it was a fun time to get out of the office and have everyone hanging out together.

This does nothing to try and convince everyone that Ryan doesn't design gardens and plant trees for a living, and he really is an engineer. (That's directed at you, Darren Moore!)

And yes, Ryan was the goofball that wore sandals to a tree planting. But, they were "athletic sandals"!

Who was there...

Check out the pictures we just found!


Who was there...


for Ryan and Tara's first picture together?
when this was the view for dinner?

when Ryan and Tara were this skinny? (To her credit, Tara is this skinny again! Ryan is hopeless!)when we got engaged!

When Ryan bleached his hair. Yes, that was scary. Strangely enough, Ryan met his future in-laws with hair like this. How did he ever pass the test?!

Sorry, that's kind of unfair to many of you since all of these happened when we lived in Turkey. But even if you weren't among the handful of people there with us, we figured everyone would get a kick out of this - especially Ryan's hair.