Snyder

Jonny finished his last day teaching his two week 'Adventures in Learning' program at OSU yesterday. Since we only have one car for the summer, the boys and I have been pretty much home-bound every day until 2/3ish when Jonny comes home with the car. It's really not that bad; I didn't go out much when we had the second car anyway. However, in an effort to mix things up a bit and do something to get us out of the house (something besides our usual neighborhood walk) we decided to go in to Corvallis with Jonny on Fridays. We had a lot of fun both days- going to places like the park, Petco, a friends house, the water fountains, the dollar store, the toy factory, story time, the animal shelter etc. (Curious George calls the humane society the animal shelter, so of course Eli does.) It worked out really well to tire the boys out doing fun activities, meet Jonny for lunch, and then put the boys in the car for their nap and drive around looking the beautiful big houses on the gorgeous green hills of Corvallis.

Yesterday Jonny and the other teachers had to do a 'show case' of their activities for the students' parents to see what they were up to. (And what they spent so much money on!) Jonny's table was a hit. He was experimenting with liquid nitrogen. I couldn't stand near him because there were always too many people surrounding his table. One parent told me Jonny's class was her son's favorite. Go Jonny! Anyway, it was pretty fun. I wish I had a picture of Eli standing next to Jonny wearing his saftey glasses. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it- it was super cute!



After about an hour of watching Jonny's experiments I decided to take the boys somewhere to waste time for the last 40ish minutes. The humane society was really close, so we stopped by. We had been there before, about two weeks ago asking if they had any puppies and how often they get them. And guess what!? They had puppies! They just got three lab mix puppies on Tuesday, and the adoption fee was almost $100 less than what we were looking at on the pet adoption network online. Jonny has really been wanting to get a lab, specifically a chocolate lab. Two of the three were already adopted, and one was left- a chocolate lab. To make a long story short, we went back to get Jonny, drove back to the animal shelter and left for home with a puppy. Jonny loved him! He's never had a puppy before, so he was really excited about the whole thing... along with the boys.

We've only had him for 24 hrs now, and I'm feeling a little... um... overwhelmed. I keep thinking we should have just had another baby. It's such a big commitment. And babies are so much better. I'd much rather be slobbered on by a baby than to have a cold dog mouth lick my arm. After holding babies, you smell good. After holding puppies, you smell like a dog. And then there's training! Ah! We went to Petco today to get some dog stuff... sheesh! $60 later I was scratching my head wondering what we got ourselves into. Okay, I'll stop complaining. Luckily Jonny is really, really into this dog. He's pretty much doing everything- including taking the dog out of his kennel three times last night to pee. The boys are both a little frightened and totally obsessed with the puppy.


So here he is. Meet the newest member to the Oelkers household. We named him Snyder, in honor of some good friends we have. :) Oh, and his birthday is the same day as mine.