A Day Off Together!

Dave and I enjoyed a day off together! For most married couples, that doesn't sound that exciting...but for me and Dave, we cherish the little bit of time off we get to spend together. A whole day off together is comes about once every blue moon. I'm not kidding. Aside from our last few 'vacations' (our quick trips to Kansas City in April, Duluth in March, and New Jersey in February), I think our last day off together that we actually spent at home was the day after Christmas. And that day I was sick on the couch (not so fun).

But today was great. The dogs let us sleep in until 9 a.m. After we woke up, got ready and fed the dogs, we took a short little bike ride to the Caribou Coffee nearby our house. We ordered pastries, coffee and bought a paper and hung out there for a while reading our paper and sipping our mochas. Then we went to Best Buy and used the Rewards certificates we got from buying our TV a couple of months ago.

The best part of our day was taking the dogs to the dog park. We met our friends Matt and Angela and their dog Jack at Minnehaha Park. The dog park there is basically a trail through the woods that takes you down to the Mississippi River. The dogs went swimming in the river. Well, Otis just waded in the water. It was Coopers first time at a body of water, so he went swimming and did the doggy paddle (I think it was probably an accident as he didn't realize the water would get deeper the farther in you went). We spent a good 1 1/2 hours walking around and watching the dogs play with other pups and explore and swim and run. And man, did the dogs get dirty! Between the water, the sand, the mud...they were one big mess.

On our way home, we had to stop at the 'pet wash.' It's this building that has three different sections. On one side there's a self-serve car wash, and on the other side there's an automatic car wash. In the middle, there's a self-serve dog wash. You walk the dog up this ramp that basically walks the dog into a tub. Then you hook the dog up to a post and there is a hose you spray with the with...it was pretty cool, because there were different buttons you could press that made different things come out of the hose with the water. There was a button for shampoo, one for conditioner, one for flea protection, one for rinse and the final button was for a giant blow dryer tube. We had never been there, but it worked great! It was so much better than drying to use our cold hose outside (it wasn't very warm today), or trying to carry them through the house up to our bathtub...and they would have clogged it with how messy there were today.

Tonight we went over to my parents' house for dinner. They had some of their friends over and my sister Rachel was there too. Oleg was there. He goes back home tomorrow. Dinner was tasty.
We got a lot of great photos at the dog park. Here's some of the best.

Family Photo!

The Plitzkow's!

Cooper got so dirty!

Me and my boys!

Cooper before he jumped in the river.

Cooper's a big boy -- taught himself how to swim in the river.

Cooper was so cute all wet and dirty.

Otis practicing his agility.

The boys were so tired on the way home.