I’m so far behind in my blogs I really just have to tell you about the photos that have been taken in the last week. So, here goes.
One cloudy day, too cold for the beach, we decided to take the bikes down to “The Strand” for an afternoon ride. Rylie loves to cruise around in her chariot of style (pulled behind Josh on his bike), and since we just bought it this fall, we basically missed the whole summer worth of opportunity to use it. No time like the present. Enroute, and on arrival, we watched some surfing, Rylie conquered the playground (up and down the stairs and slides all on her own this time), dirtied her pants with playground wetness, and filled her little suede shoes with sand. I had to pry her proud lips off the beach when it was time.
On Saturday night, there was a Santa Clause Parade down in Encinitas. It was a busy day for us also, as we’d been interviewing and meeting a few doggy boarding families around the area and saw our second home that afternoon. Nixon would have loved the yard complete with real grass, but it was a bit far away from us (45 minutes drive), there weren’t many dogs to play with, and the nice family just didn’t seem “doggy loving” or professional enough if that makes any sense. It’s hard to explain but that was a unanimous feeling for us both heading home.
With that in mind, and according to saturday tradition we took our furry pal to the dog park in hopes we might ask around for any new leads. But, before we could, I ended up finding a nice family on Facebook that boards in their home in Carlsbad and we made arrangements for an overnight trial. Phew! Third time’s a charm, right? Hope so.
From the dog park we went straight to downtown Encinitas to pull up a crumb of curb before the parade started. It was already really busy, so we parked a good jaunt away, and found a nice corner of real estate at the very beginning of the route. It was an interesting experience for a couple of reasons. One, it was dark. Two, we had our goofy dog along. And three, I was trying to feed Rylie the most simplest real meal I could find at last minute (a chicken quesadilla) and feed her in the stroller with him drooling all over the place, standing and sticking his butt in a nearby child’s face trying to look cute for a wee little taste. Oh Nixon.
Rylie enjoyed the parade, filled with families and children, and decorated cars. The most popular entry item was a herd of children each on a decorated scooter complete with Christmas lights following a simple float. It was a cute parade, and it had some flare, and you wouldn’t believe the crowds that came to watch. We didn’t make it to the end to see Santa (Rylie was either wanting to escape and crawl along the parade route or play with a random skateboard on the ground) and we were too late to see the tree lighting at the beginning. But, I think it was worth going to see how the community comes together for the holidays.
