Saturday sans dog

A few days ago I received an e-mail from Brother Nick extending an invite to bring Beaut over to spend some quality time with Autzen (who is now an astounding 65 lbs, 2 lbs shy of Beaut's current weight, and at what the vet estimates is 65% of his growth - meaning he'll get much bigger and/or broader by the time he stops growing). So on Friday night we hopped into the dog car (a.k.a. Olive) after work and headed to Newberg.

Beautimous Jones always seems to know where we are headed and it couldn't have been more apparent she was excited about her mini holiday at Uncle Nick's than when we pulled up to the house and she started a refrain in dogspeak from the backseat. "Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out." Beaut and Autzen were busy in the backyard when we left a short while later.

What is most weird about not having the dog at home is the sudden freedom from responsibility. We slept in Saturday morning, and when we finally did manage to drag our butts out of bed the day opened up to us with zero thought of when we would have to return home to take care of the dog's needs. We took the opportunity to spend the day roaming Portland - stopping at Genies for breakfast, IKEA (to have Darr check out the inexpensive crib that is surprisingly sturdy), Grasshopper (for the AB/CD shirt, which they no longer have in infant sizes but I found here, we also purchased the Sit N Walk Puppy by Plan toys for the R.A. and Table Tennis for Darr and I), Tin Shed (where Darr had a girlie drink and I had chocolate milk), and Black Wagon (where we purchased ultra cool art for the R.A.'s room (pictured below) and learned about Rattle-N-Roll birth announcements - these things are AWESOME). We came home, cooked dinner, played a little table tennis, and watched Hot Fuzz. Yep, it's a full life, for sure.

The art we bought for the Resident Alien. Nice, eh?