Summer Fun!

 

Welcome to Seaside, Oregon! We went here to celebrate my birthday!  Seaside was really cool.  It had lots of shops and stuff.  Unfortunately, we got stuck with a dreary day.  You really couldn't see the ocean at all, it was cold and foggy and the water was freezing.

 Rachel has often told me of her memories of Seaside as a child, when her family went there and visited the Seaside Candyman.  This place had somewhere around 170 different flavors of salt water taffy.  Rachel has since then ranted about how she loved this place.  We went back and as you can see (In the next picture), tried almost every flavor.

 

 My birthday was awesome!  My wife is the best and I love her!  She got me a manly diaper bag, because I was complaining one time about how feminine diaper bags are and how much of a sissy I would look like with them.  This manly diaper bag will make me and my son look like real tough dudes.  I also got Super Mario Bros Wii!  Really fun game.  I got a few shirts.  Lastly, she got me a grill with tools, charcoals and hickory wood chips.  I am now a grilling king.

 Our baby has gradually been getting bigger.  Here's a recent picture of Rachel and our boy at 36 weeks.  Rachel has been getting more and more uncomfortable, but still feels okay most of the time.  Her main symptom is swelling in her legs and feet, pretty much all the time.  A few people have mentioned that it's the worst they've ever seen.  Other than that, she feels tired and light headed a lot.  She still feels lucky to have had a pretty easy going pregnancy though.

 A couple of weeks ago, Rachel and I went up to northern Washington to Lake Palmer for our Grimmer family reunion.  This was a monumental one, because all of my brothers and sisters were able to make it there at the same time.  The whole family was there on Sunday (Minus Steve.  He was sick, but greatly missed).  The whole week had fun activities.  On Tuesday, our sister-in-law Diana planned a baby shower for us, since we weren't going to have one otherwise.  It was really well planned out with fun games and treats for all.  Above is a picture of Rachel and I at our baby shower.  The crown had to be put on my head via scotch tape.

 The first game we played was something like, "Don't break the water."  Appropriate, for a baby shower.  You had to hold a water balloon between your legs and run to the goal.  I failed miserably.  The second, (pictured below) was some other game where you had to roll dice (doubles, 7 or 11) in order to gain control of the pot of M&M's.  When you had control you sucked M&M's with the straw into your cup.  Rachel and I came in dead last.  We really sucked... or we didn't suck.  Something like that.

 We got a lot of awesome stuff for our son.  The super baby outfit was amongst the coolest of them.  We got an awesome bassinet, and lots of diapers and wipes.  It was a success and a lot of fun!  Thanks Diana!

This is our Mom, Dad & Sibling picture.  This is the first family picture we've had in 6 years.

Here's the rest of the family.

We spent the rest of the week swimming and boating.  

This picture was of us jumping off the boat (Pictured left to right: Dan, Diana, Amber, Scott and Rob). 

During the reunion, I was the master wakeboarder!  At least, I was until I crashed and got a concussion, that is.  I'll tell you the story, because it sounds like it was funny (I actually don't remember any of it).  I was wakeboarding and I was weaving in out of the wake.  I guess I was just being retarded or something, because my board turned sideways and I face-planted into the water.  I remember that my feet rocketed out of the boots and I just floated for a while in extreme pain with my eyes closed.  After a while I swam after my board and went in to the boat.  I helped Amber figure out how to get the wakeboard on and then I don't remember the next half hour.

I guess the next half hour progressed like this: We had this other red wakeboard that was bootless.  I wanted to try it out.  I tried it before my concussion, but was unsuccessful in getting up onto it.  During Amber's attempt to wakeboard I kept asking if I had tried out the red board yet.  They said that I had and I would reply back, "Did I get up?"  This happened several times until Rachel, Kim and Dan decided to ask me other questions.  "Do you remember FHE on Monday?"  "No."  "Do you remember our baby shower yesterday?"  " No. . . We had a baby shower?"  So it was pretty obvious something was wrong.  I kept making the same lame jokes and asking the same questions.  That's pretty much it.  I still don't remember the half hour, but the rest of my memory came back.

That's the story of my first concussion.

 

In other news, we're finally done with organizing our apartment.  We had lots of little projects we'd been meaning to do, so we've kept busy going through things and organizing. Now that we're done with everything major, it's relax time until baby comes and school starts.  Rachel is 37 and a half weeks along now, so the baby is already full term. We're really excited for it to happen already. Maybe our next blog will have baby news!