Monday, July 7, 2008

Wet and Wild in Iowa City

Owen was back at his favorite fountain this weekend. Last fall I posted the following video of Owen running through the ped mall fountain in Iowa City.



This video has been viewed almost 3,000 times since October. Its popularity, I reckon, is a good indicator of the kind of search topics people are regularly feeding into YouTube. Then again, it may merely represent the supreme humor Owen's grandfather finds in watching our little guy getting soaked head to toe again and again.

If my second notion is correct, this is Grandpa's lucky day. We had great weather this weekend and spent a lot of time downtown. Here's a new fountain video ...



Below you'll also find a snapshot we took of Owen partaking in his (at least for one day) favorite activity in the fountain. I guarantee, if this had been on video it would eclipse last year's "Super wet in the fountain" in popularity with ease.

You know there's a whole "Tap water enema" subculture out there that would make this their holy grail.

There were other water sports this weekend, including cannonballs into the backyard pool.

Followed by some aqua yoga ...

And there were many other highlights as well. We got to see our dear friends Jeff and Melissa and their daughter Olivia. We ran into the lovely Marie at the Farmer's Market. We haven't seen Marie, who sang at our wedding, since Owen was Maya's age. We also saw Ann, one of my oldest friends from high school, and her husband Jim (who, ironically, I think I've actually known longer than Ann) out with their boys at the Bonerama (here playing with OK GO on Letterman) concert at the Jazz Festival.

We also got to look at the flood damage, which was pretty sobering at times. Seeing Hancher, the arts campus and the English building, then driving into Coralville where the water line left by the flood waters ran inches from the top of doorways added a sense of verisimilitude to the many photos we've seen over the past couple of months.

On a lighter, and final note for today: Above is Maya at 3.5 months, below is Owen when he was 5 months old. Seeing the resemblance is fun, especially as we see the little boy Owen has become in the past three years. It's sometimes easy to forget that Maya is also on that path and will be laughing and running with her big brother through the fountain this time next year.

I'm sure it will be immensely popular on YouTube.