Testing the water

Quick check of the water... not to hot. not to cold.

Owen's First Solo Steps

Sorry it took more than a week to post... but here is a quick clip of some of Owen's first solo steps. This clip is from back in Erie. Click the picture or this link.

Owen at Lake Erie

IMG_1243
Originally uploaded by rick loughery.

It took Owen a bit to get use to the warm lake water (as compared to the cold salty waters in Nor Cal) but he loved it. And as always he has fun in the sand.

Trip back to Erie

The trip back to Erie was a good one. The flights back and forth were pretty smooth, much to the relief of our fellow passengers. Owen managed to sleep for most of the flights, but we were not as lucky.

Owen had a jammed pack week of “firsts.” From his first trip to the zoo where he had his first train ride and his first ride on the carousel to practicing his walking by taking his first solo steps at grandmom’s house. I’ll post some video of the walking this week.

Click on Flickr badge to right (with moving pics of Owen) or this link to check out some photos of Owen’s trip. If you go to the main Flickr home page - just type in "owenloughery" (all one word) in the search bar.

Wild Kingdom

Saturday night was pretty much like a National Geographic show.... well maybe not quite that extreme. None the less - at one point we had two raccoons in the garage, one perched in the pair tree and one under the sliding board. Kim shined the flash light up the hill and there was tabby cat standing guard on the fence and a deer grazing in the brush.

You can only imagine that Rupert wasn't going to just sit by and watch.
Rupert went nuts,
the cat scrammed,
the deer darted and
Owen started crying.

A few of the raccoons retreated further into the neighbors yard but we weren’t sure if the raccoons in the garage had left.
We brought Rupert in to the garage to sniff out the situation. Sure enough he found them hiding in corner, under the workbench and behind the boxes. We dragged Rupert out and just decided to let the raccoons make their own way out.

All is back to normal on Sunday morning. What ever normal is.

Saturday morning ride.

The weather finally started breaking from the gray gloom.

It felt good to see the blue skies on the coast again.

Walking with some help

Owen's quickly picking up this walking thing... with a little help from the cart and motivation to chase Rupert. Click here or the screen shot for the movie.

Reading Time

Owen is definitely a fan of Brown Bear, Brown Bear...

Preparing for our trip back to Erie. We take a red eye on Wednesday night... should be quite the experience.

Time on the couch

Well we are putting away some of Owen's first pieces of furniture, like the "Bump and Jump" and "Hop-n-Pop." ah... they were good devices to keep him happy. But now he is motoring around, so being locked into one thing is not cutting it. Here is a pic of O on his first couch. If you go to Flickr there are some other picks. Just type in Owenloughery in the search bar.

Jack Johnson @ the Greek

Kim and I took a break from the grey weather on the coast to go to Bezerkeley to see Jack Johnson play on Saturday night.

The Glam Life

just to show you that Owen’s not always so Glam

Slow on blogs/busy at work

Been a pretty busy week at work.
Grey weather along the coast.
Sorry the blog is was slow this week.

Balloon Man short

Here is a quick video of Owen and his first balloon. (although it might take a little bit of time to load)

Below are a couple of pics.

(oh..by the way....the balloon didn't survive its first day home alone with Rupert)

The Balloon Man

It was Noe's birthday today (the woman who watches Owen during the day). And she gave O a balloon to take home. Owen was pretty amazed by this blue thing. I believe this is Owen's first balloon - thankfully it didn't pop.... yet.

Under the weather

This weekend, I managed to get a little bit more work done outside to the fence but things kind of slow down as Owen came down with a fever of 104. We took him into the doctors and it looks like a typical cold. Needless to say it has been along weekend but we managed to sneak a few cat naps in.

Go to www.flickr.com and type in owenloughery (all one word) where it says "find a photo" to see a couple more pics from the weekend. (you don't need a username or password).

Watching the videos

Okay so the windows world and the mac world just don't get along. #&@$!!
For folks on Windows PC, who don't have QuickTime - try downloading from the link below.

Note - You might want to select the version for Windows 98/ME because the other choice comes with iTunes and you might not need/want it. (see the picture to the left.) I tried this out on another Windows PC and it worked.

I am hoping to "upgrade" soon so we can avoid this problem. Let me know if you still have trouble with the video.

after you have downloaded QuickTime - you can watch the videos. the first video post "the walker" has a short video of Owen's first steps.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html

Crawling

Owen's not exactly a speed demon... yet.

Party Tricks and Other Noises

One of our favorite things are the noises that Owen is making right now... he is doing a good job with the ma..ma..ma..ma.. and da..da..da..da.. but the growls are our favorite.

Click here for the video... or the picture.

Reminder if you don't have QuickTime click here... for instructions.

Ride A Wave

Although there is some element of truth (and even idyllic quality) to the stereo type - there is definitely more to surfing then the Spicoli-esque version. Here is an article from today’s San Francisco Chronicle about a nonprofit that I work with called Ride A Wave. The last couple of years I have only made a couple of the camps... but it is something that I have been doing for 4/5 years now and hope to continue to do for many more. I called this writer up to cover this event and I believe that he captured it perfectly.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/04/SPG46E2H4P1.DTL

3 is the magic number

This weekend, marked three years since Kim and I made it “official.” We celebrated by spending our first night away from Owen. While we both have had nights away from O, this was the first time the two of us were away from him.

Things went great, well almost. Owen did great but the real problem child proved to be Rupert (go figure). Rupert decided to protect the Kellers from the wild raccoons.

None the less, we had an amazing time. A great dinner and an excellent stay at the