Han Solo is growing up...

The neighbor girls love our dogs, so today after church they came over to play with their dad and baby brother (super cute don't you think?)
Hans loves the kids so that's really good. He always gives them a few barks at first but then immediately goes up and wants them to pet him and give him treats. The girls are funny because they assume since Sadie is so much bigger that she is Hans's mom. We explained to them that they are more like brother and sister than mommy and son. So now they refer to Sadie as the sister-dog and Hans as the brother-dog. They were super concerned when we told them we didn't know where their mommies were anymore, but were put at ease when we said that we were now like their mommies. Kale is the baby and he just laughed and giggled and let both dogs come up to him and breath in his face and everything. Too bad these guys are moving in a week since their dad is graduating from medical school...they are sooooo cute!

Later in the evening Katrina, Alissa and I took Sadie and Hans to the dog park so they could run around with the other dogs. They both LOVE riding in the car and so does Alissa as you can tell :). Sadie is the queen of the dog park, she's runs around like a crazy and has to "meet" every single dog there. Hans is getting less timid about leaving me. He isn't afraid of any of the dogs, he'll go up right away and say "hi" if I'm nearby. He's just not ready to run with the big dogs quite yet. The last picture is my favorite, mainly because that's what Hans will do when he is "done"...he basically dive bombs in the grass with his arms next to his body and his feet stretched out behind him. As if to say "I'm dead now, lets go home".

Hans's First Ride with the Window Down

...and he LOVED it. I spent most of the time trying to keep him from leaping out of the car, but I got some good pictures. However, the only way for me to capture them was to take a picture through the side-view mirrors...

TOSRV 2011

TOSRV= Tour of the Scioto (sounds like sigh-oh-ta) River Valley.

So I have ridden with the TOSRV two other times but never as an official registered rider. And only for 50 miles, after that we would turn around in Chillicothe and ride back (100 total)

. This year I had stars in my eyes and decided I wanted to ride the entire thing (two days...210 miles), but unfortunately the weather was not on my side and without a trainer, I was unable to ride very many days outside. So yesterday I packed my bags and met Dean and Drake at the start, near the capitol building in Columbus at 7 am (Thanks to my roomate Alissa who dropped me off). The weather was the best its been the entire month of April, not too hot, not too cold and not too much wind. Anyway, I rode the 105 miles down to Portsmouth and it really wasn't too bad. However, at mile 95, I hit my wall and I knew I would never make it back the start the next day. So I did what any respectable biker did, I bailed in Portsmouth. Alissa and Katrina kindly drove my car the 100 miles and piled themselves and all the dogs inside and came and picked me, my bike and my luggage up. Last night, instead of sleeping on a gym floor, I cozied up in my nice, comfortable bed with my puppy at my side and slept like a baby.