Riker's Daddy needs a vacation...

"Don't go in the water...."


'Round and 'Round...


Twist n' Shout...

Skyhoundz Regionals 2008

This weekend was the Skyhoundz Regional (www.skyhoundz.com). It was a long, fun 1.5 days.



Friday night I headed to New Castle, IN. About 15 miles from before getting there I met Christina Curtis, fellow Disc Dogger, who is my pairs freestyle partner at a park to practice. This is a cool part of the comptition where you have 2 people and one dog doing a routine together. Because of Riker being born this year, and the price of gas we never worked out any times we could get together to practice for Regionals. So we practiced the night before, nothing like waiting until the last minute!

Saturday's competion was a FULL day full of lots of exciting routines and rounds of distance. My day started with Guinan doing a round of Distance and Accuracy, which we did pretty good in. We ended up in 2nd place out of 47 teams after one round. Potter didn't do too bad, he scored 7 points, a new record for Potter, which put him about 25 out of 47 teams, so that was great!

We then moved onto Freestyle. Guinan and I went out and did a round of freestyle, which I thought went pretty well and was a lot of fun to do.


This routine put us into 3rd place after all 35 freestyle teams went.

At this point the weather headed south for awhile.



Later after the rain stopped Potter and I competed in freestyle. We had a lot of fun. Didn't score real great, but he is coming along.



Then they had pairs freestyle, which meant that Christina, Guinan, and I (Our Team name is: Triple Treat) had to go. It was evident by our routine that we hadn't practiced much.




I won't bore you with all the details of the rest of the day, but here is where Guinan and I ended up placing on the day:

FREESTYLE-4th place (top 4 qualify for Worlds) - QUALIFIED
PAIRS Freestyle-2nd place (top 2 qualify for Worlds) - QUALIFIED
DISTANCE-we won! (top 4 qualify for Worlds) - QUALIFIED

I was very happy how the weekend went. My goal for the weekend was to qualify in the above 3 events, and that is exactly what I did. Now it is time to get ready for worlds!

Cooking Lessons

Sydney has really been growing leaps and bounds with her abilities and helpfulness around the house. She helps with the laundry, dusting, "vacuuming", and is constantly picking up and putting away the dog's toys (much to their dismay!). So, Daddy thought it was about time for her to help out with the cooking too :-)

So she got to help make a batch of her Dad's famous Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip cookies (2 lbs of chips per batch! -- Yikes!). She did a great job and didn't even get very messy!




We are so proud of our "big girl"!

Riker "Speaks"

Riker has been a joy around our house as he is starting to develop a bit of a personality and smiling for us. He is generally very laid back but loves his dad's voice, "talking" to the ceiling fan and adores watching his big Sis Sydney. He likes to flirt with Mommy too :-)



Mom has spent some time with him trying to catch a picture or video of him smiling and talking a bit. This is one of about 10 videos she took trying to get his adorableness on record.

Disc-Dogging in 30 sec.

The video says it all.

A Trip to the Zoo/A Rip-"Roaring" good time!

Sydney took another trip to the zoo, but this time Riker came along. He didn't do much but sleep on the visit.


Riding around is hard work. :-)

Sydney got to see many different animals up close.




But the highlight of the visit for all of us was going to see the lions. We don't know why they torture the lions the way they do, but they have them setup where they are looking at the exhibit with the giant cattle in it all day long! We had a little excitement while we were standing looking at the lions. Check it out!



Once Sydney was ready to leave she moved us along, by helping to get Riker out of the park a bit faster.


She's a great stroller driver!

Family Footstall Training

Danny here:
I have been working on a trick called a footstall (where the dog stands on your feet). I had just moved to the step in the process where they jump on my feet, but I want a spotter and someone who can place there feet correctly for me. Originally I was only going to do this trick with Guinan and Potter.





But it seems that Frodo wanted to get in on the act


Think he got up there himself. :-)

But the excitement doesn't stop there, the whole family seemed to think it looked like fun. Sydney took a crack at it.



She also had to ham it up for a small video clip:


And of course one sibling can't do a footstall without they other one saying they have to do it. I am sure every parent has heard it hundreds of times, "She did a footstall why can't I!?".

The Mobile Goes 'Round 'n' 'Round

We got Sydney a mobile when she was around 2 months old, and she just loved it. Since Riker is almost 2 months old we decided to to hook it up for him. He thought it was pretty neat and Sydney thought it was cool to see her younger brother using it.



We decided that it might be cute to see what Sydney thought of the mobile now that she is older so we laid her in with her brother hoping that they would get along. Thankfully they did great!



If you have a moving toy and still picture you can't tell what the toy really does so we had to do a short video.

Handy Helper

Sydney has decided that helping out dad is the "cool" thing to do. But before she can help dad she has to get her self in shape, and arm wrestling Grandpa is a good test of her strength.



Now that she is ready to help, Sydney needed her own wheelbarrow and she was ready to start moving landscaping rock (which she was actually very good at!).



And you can't be helpful if you are afraid of heights, so Sydney had to show that she could climb ladders and change light bulbs with dad.