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Monday, February 15, 2010

2010 snow!!!

This winter has been an amazing winter in NC! Troutman has gotten a lot of snow and we have enjoyed ALL of it!!! This winter I have had more snow in NC than the previous 6 years combined. Andrea pointed out just the 1/29 snow was more than the previous 6 years combined!! Eli loves the snow as much as his Mama and Dada!!

Snow provides a LOT of work at the park, especially because we are not really equipped for the amount that we got this year, but it is so much fun. I love the silence that fills the woods when they are covered in snow. Eli also gets really excited about seeing the snow and will ask us to open the door so he can look at it. We talked about a snowsuit and boots for Eli but decided not to get one and now we regret it, maybe next year :-)

Enjoy our winter wonderland pics and videos!

As posted earlier we got about 4" on 12/19/09

01/29/10 Snow starts to fall, by 01/30/10 we have about 8":

Eli and Mama walking in the snow.



This video is from 1/29 while the 8" of snow was coming down. We had to get out and play in it before bath time, because I had to work the next day.


This video is from after work on 1/30. We were not able to get all of the roads scraped so we were able to sled in the road on one of the big hills. We had to use a garbage can lid. This was Eli's first sledding experience and he loved it. He would not make a single sound on the ride but would say "Mo', Mo'" (more, more) as soon as the ride was over. My slide is slower because it was the first run and I had to pack down the track :-) I promise we sped up in subsequent rides, as you saw with Andrea!


Eli didn't have a scarf so we used an ear warmer :-)

Our garbage can lid sled.

Enjoying the snow!

He didn't sled by himself we just staged this pic.

02/08/10 through 02/12/10 Blowing Rock, NC for training:

I was in Blowing Rock for 5 days for a Search and Rescue training and I had a blast. There were 9 rangers in the training and some of us went sledding on a hill near the Blue Ridge Parkway office.

This day only one other ranger and I went sledding. It was just us because it was VERY cold and windy, in fact we were under a blizzard warning :-)


This video is of me snowboarding in a blizzard :-) This is one of the only runs that I made it all the way without a spill! It was so much fun, and recorded on one of those crazy smart phones! I am going down the gentler side of the hill.



This video is of an Elk Knob ranger sliding down the steeper side of the same hill the day after the previous video.

Sledding partners.

Sledding at the parkway office.

The view from my hotel room at the training.

02/12/10 into 02/13/10 about 4":
The day after I got back from the mountains we got 4" of snow. It was very powdery snow, and again Eli enjoyed it.

Eli likes to try and throw the snow.

Eli and Dada walking in the snow.




This video is of Eli playing in the snow. We also let him ride this smaller hill on his own. If we had let the video run a little longer you would hear him ask for more!

Eli and Mama on the boat launch.

Eli likes the water too much to look at the camera.

Mama, Eli, and Dada.

We weren't the only ones who left tracks.

Raccoons!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Lazy 5 Ranch (Lots of Pics)

On 1/28 Andrea, Eli, Libby, Luke and I went to the Lazy 5 Ranch, just outside of Mooresville. It was a ton of fun and very amusing! It was much larger and had a lot more diversity than I thought it would. Eli was a little scared at first but when he got into it he was saying "Hi" to all the animals as they came to the car.

Our first visitors.

Libby and Luke enjoying the animals.

Eli not sure what to think.

Emus circling the van.

Lots of Lamas on the Ranch.

Eli still shy of the animals.
I'll admit it did have a bit of a Jurassic Park feel to it....


Especially the Ostriches!!
They would circle the car and peck the windows!!!!


Eli getting a little more comfortable and
confident that he is safe from the animals.


more Lamas

It looks like some of the wildlife got into the car!

Eli loves Giraffes!

This guy was HUGE!

Thankfully, these guys were not interested in
coming to the car to look for food.


The Bison!

Now he is loving it!

Our navigator.

Elk!

These guys were cute.... but one of their dumb
little friends hoofed and scratched the car....grrr


Zebras.

They grow up so fast.....

These guys were really cool.

Long horns that thankfully got no where near the car.

Unfortunately the focus is on the background, but I love this pic!!!

No animals within reach so the windows came down :-)

The Prairie Dogs at the parking lot were really cool!

Maybe my favorite part.

They also had a bunch of swings and
a playground, that we took advantage of.


Newborn goats.

There were also a lot of birds and other animals, but there was a winter storm warning for the next day so a lot of the tropical animals were inside trying to stay warm!

We really had a good time and I look forward to going back again!!!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

New Vidoes

As I said in my last post, Eli is doing a lot of fun new things. Below are videos of Eli running and throwing some balls, Eli sliding in E-Town over Christmas, and a video of a wagon ride and Eli showing us his huge vocabulary. Also, if you check out the NC Christmas post Andrea added a fun video of Eli and Claire being silly with a new book.


This video is from mid-January around the time when Eli started running.


This video is from Christmas in KY. Besides climbing back onto the straight slide as soon as he is done, if you listen closely when he gets off of the twisty slide he says "more" and is doing the more sign :-) Eli loves to slide!!! As I uploaded these videos Eli kept wanting to watch them again and again and was especially excited about the sliding videos and would even say "wee!" He also kept saying "Jill, Jill" over and over as we watched them! :)


Eli is such a talker and he knows so many words!! In fact tonight at dinner he said "butter" and pointed at the tub, we didn't even teach him that he just said it out of the blue!!!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Silly Boy!

These are some pics of Eli playing around the house and some of the fun things he is doing now.

He loves to put on our gloves, hats and the oven mitt! He says "Bless" when he hears someone, including Doc, sneeze, and he says "excuse you" when he or someone else burps or poots.... Funny side note: the other night in Durham (all three of us in one room) Andrea and I crawled into bed and Eli was asleep, though not soundly he was moaning and rolling around, and I ripped one. IN HIS SLEEP, Eli said "excuse you"! We were laughing so hard, we had our faces buried into the pillows so we didn't wake him up! It was awesome!! He also says "Okay", it is VERY cute. He is also running all over the place. Finally, he is becoming a parrot, saying most things we ask him to say, or at least trying to! Most of his words are understandable, but of course not all of them. Two of his more unfortunate words are hands and branch (he says branch instead of stick). Branch sounds like bi**h or sometimes beach, and hands sounds like a@@, I think it is pretty funny but Andrea is working very diligently on stick!

Another one of our favorites happened just a couple of days ago. We asked Eli if he wanted to go to Chick-fil-a and his response was BOOO (his cow sound)!! We asked again and he said BOO, Cluck, Cluck!!! Ahhh a proud papa :-)

Eli with Mama's gloves on.

Successfully using a sippy cup with the gloves on!

Book! Book! Eli loves to read!

Both of Eli's legs are sticking out of the crib!