Summer

Ellen had her first trip to the Oregon Coast this last week. We took her to te Newport Aquarium and then spent a couple of days in Lincoln City after that. She was really interested in the "strangewater" fish that's their current exhibit. It's a bunch of weird looking fish and she had a lot of fun running up to each tank screaming "WOW!"
After the aquarium, we drove to Lincoln city to check into our hotel and then Erika couldn't wait to get her down to the beach to try out her bucket of beach toys. She wasn't too into them at first and wanted to stand around looking at the other beach dwellers...

but she eventually warmed up to the toys and we built a couple piles of sand.

The next day we walked around the beach some more and had fun trying to get Ellen a little bit more interested in everything. It was colder and looked like it was going to rain, so we didn't stay long, but she did have fun running around.

After her nap, we tried to take her into the pool to test how well her future swimming lessons would go. She enjoyed the new clothes.

But not so much the swimming.

She eventually started to enjoy it and swimming lessons this week have been pretty fun. Although it's pretty much "swim around with your kids for the half hour and then we'll sing some songs in a circle." Which would be fine, except I'm the only guy in the group (excluding a couple baby boys) as the two other guys that were going stopped coming because their kids didn't seem to like it.

On the way home we stopped at Tillamook and toured the factory. Really neat to see how they make and package their cheese... but torture because I couldn't have any of the ice cream or cheese that filled the place.

My next summer project: teaching Ellen how to use the potty. I'm just curious who she picked this technique up from....