Our happy girl Sydney!

Our silly Sydney has found many ways to have fun. She is generally a very happy baby girl! Here is Sydney is enjoying riding her new truck.


Who said babies don't CHEESE for the camera?!

Another way Sydney has fun is by laughing at Guinan and Dad doing dog Frisbee. Watch these two wonderful videos of Syd cracking up at Guinan. Hopefully they will make you smile or laugh too.

Finally the pitter patter of little feet!

Sydney finally did it. She took her first step! And by a stroke of pure LUCK, we got her first step on video. In fact we got it on video twice. Danny was taping and so was Danny's dad. Here's our video!




Since then she has taken a couple more steps (no real "walks" though), and her balance has improved by LOTS she is even bending to wrap her arms around and pick up things bigger than she is: like the diaper bag or Potter the new puppy (the new very, very patient puppy)!

Sydney has also learned to play a new game PEEK-A-BOO with her doing the hiding. It is the cutest thing and we thought we'd share. Some of the time she really is hiding behind a blanket and other times she just thinks it hides her! Enjoy.

A Very Successful Disc Dog Practice

Danny here!

Just had to share the great success we had practicing with the dogs for disc dogging. And yes I said DOGS, and I don't mean 1 or 2 I mean ALL 3 of them. I started the practice with Guinan where we worked and had a great round of Distance and Accuracy and then ran through our Freestyle, which was the best it has been in awhile.

BUT then is when the REAL show started. I got Frodo out. For those of you who don't know Frodo is the Mascot of the team, because he just doesn't like to Disc Dogging. Well, I think the little dude has changed his mind. He was vaulting off of me for catches, which he already has done a bit. The BIG thing he was doing was chasing down 15 yard throws and catching them in the air while jumping. He was thrilled. I was thrilled. I think the new puppy has made him decide to play. I can't tell you how happy this makes me! I wish I had a video or picture of this but we weren't expecting much from him in the practice so we weren't prepared with the camera.

At this point I got out the new pup, Potter. He was great for his first Disc Dog practice with us. We did Rollers and takes. Here is a great still shot of him jumping for a take.




I didn't realize until I saw the video how high I was holding the disc. I will start holding it lower. :-)

Here are a couple of videos of him chasing down rollers and doing takes:






I think he may become a GREAT disc dogger in the future. If nothing else he will be a lot of fun!

He-who-must-not-be-named??

Okay, so we've had some problems with naming the new pup! We are now on our 3rd name in 2 days for the new puppy!

First he was Firebolt, but that was way too hard to say.
Second he was Seeker, which we loved, but we found out there was already someone at disc dog with that name!
So now he is... POTTER (after all he does have a bit of a lightening bolt on his head). So he is now named after the "seeker" who rides a "firebolt".

We hope we are getting to stick with this one! This poor pup, Potter, will get too confused if we change again!

Seeker catches a family!

Well we did it. Today, Danny, convinced me that it would be okay for us to get a 3rd and FINAL dog. Here is the new little guy with Danny.


It was love at first sight.

The search for another possible Frisbee dog has been doing on for a couple of months now. We had pretty specific requirements on what we were looking for. Male, Border Collie or Border Collie Ausie Mix, Smooth Coat, Tri-Colored or Red and White. What we ended up with is a Male, Border Collie, Smooth Coat, Tri-Colored 3 Month old puppy. We named him Seeker (name is from Harry Potter, from Quidditch -- a seeker is the best flyer on a team and responsible for catching things that move very fast).

Here is a picture of Christina Curtis with Seeker. She does a lot of dog rescue work and is the one that found this dog, and we adopted him from her. Many, many people having gotten their dogs and disc dogs from Christina -- we call her a puppy pusher ;-).




He has been such a sweetie so far today. He got to ride on Danny's lap on the way home from Kokomo, this will be his ONE trip in the car when he is not crated. He was sleeping or happy the whole way. No whining at all.

We took him over to Grandma and Grandpa Egg's house to say hello and meet up with their dog Wrigley. They had a great time playing. In fact Seeker was getting pretty good at grabbing hold of the hair on Wrigley's tail and holding on until it would pull out.

While we were there Sydney and Seeker started to interact.




Seeker is extremely tolerant of Sydney so far. In the picture below Sydney was actually trying to pick Seeker up. Seeker just laid there and let her.



Seeker actually limped some today, but not because of Sydney. After we had been at Grandma and Grandpa's for a while he jumped and bit something off of his leg. A honeybee had stung him. He seems fine, but I think his leg is a bit sore from where the bee got him.

Since we have been home he has been very good. In fact he is laying here asleep next to Danny on the floor. He has been following him everywhere. Which as you can guess -- makes Dannys day!

Sydney finds new places to play

We took Sydney to the park for the first time. We were surprised at how much fun she had being so small.


She was in love with the swings!

The little slide was not the greatest, a bit blah, but she didn't mind it too much


"DON'T DROP ME DAD!!!"

Sydney went down the spiral slide with her dad. Sorry the video is sideways - I was a geek and tried to tape it vertically!


Can you say static electricity?

Another day Dad and Grandpa took Sydney to Chick-Fil-A and let her play in the play area. She seemed to have a really good time exploring with the guys.


"Hello up there!"


"Aren't you the cuties girl I have ever seen?!"

House ALMOST finished

Well, we are techinecally in the house. You would think that would mean the house is done. That would normally be a valid assumption, but with our house it's not. Because of some timing issues with us needing to be out of our old house (the new buyers wantied the house by the end of July) we had to move in a bit early on our new house.

When we moved in they were installing the kitchen appliances, putting in the kitchen and bathroom counter tops, ripping out the tile on our tub (don't ask), and many other things. Not to mention that the exterior stone was not on the house. The sidewalk and step into the back door were not in, etc. Needless to say it has been a bit crazy. It is now a week and a half later, and there are still many things to be done, but there has been progress. Here are a couple of videos to show you the ALMOST finished product of our home.

4th of July Fireworks

Sydney, Danny, and I went with Danny's parents, his brother (Ben), and his girlfriend(Anita) to see the 4th of July fireworks. Sydney had a good time playing in the grass and with grandma and everyone while we waited for it to get dark.



Sydney, I think you are suppose to open the chair before you sit on it



Grandma lends a helping hand


Ben and his girlfriend, Anita, came along for the festivities.

All of us had a good time hanging out together, we think ;-)



Right before the fireworks started we decided to get a picture of dad and Sydney together

We expected one of two responses from Sydney during the fireworks. We thought : 1) we would be running for the car because she was scared and screaming OR 2) that she would be giving big smiles and loving the fireworks. But as usual Sydney did not like to be predictable, so instead she was BORED with the fireworks and played with her dad's keys through the whole show, looking up only once or twice! She seems to prefer something more exciting (hahaha).

1st Zoo Visit

In June we took Sydney on her first Zoo visit at the Potawatomi Zoo. It is a small zoo so was a nice short first trip.



She spent most of the trip to the zoo on Dad's shoulders getting a higher perspective of everything.





Sydney did show interest in some of the animals (particuarly the little monkeys and some of the cats). I am not sure what we were looking at here, but I remember trying to talk to the animal (Maybe she is Dr. Doolittle).



And what is a zoo if you can't have a petting zoo portion. She enjoyed petting the goat, not so sure what the goat thought about it.



Sydney decided it was too sunny and wanted to be cool like dad and wear his sunglasses.



Sydney liked the cages so much that after we arrived back home she went to Guinans crate and locked and closed herself in.

House Sold!

We officially sold our house yesterday. We are thrilled! We thought we would make a quick blog post with a "time warp" built in.

Here is a picture from back when we moved into the house in 2001:




And here is when we moved out of the house. Boy how our family has grown and changed (don't worry we washed the clothes between the two pictures!):




More updates to come -- we are just exhausted with moving and unpacking, when the house is complete and we are all unpacked we will post more!