Getting out there

Alright.  Catching up now.  Our winter has been pretty weird; lots of ups and downs, some rain, some snow, some more rain.  We've had days in the 60s butted up to days with highs in the 20s.  Anyway, I guess that's the new normal.  We've been trying to get out a lot and enjoy whatever mother nature and post industrial society have to offer.  Emmett's growing like a weed.  He weighs close to 20 lbs now, which is super light if you're doing reps of bicep curls, but gets heavy fast on a hike.  We are determined to have camping be a part of our normal family routine, so we've been acclimating to the family hikes, planning, talking about it, and picking places to go, both near and far.

On New Years Day Sarah went into work for a spell, so Emmett and Jonas and I ran some errands and visited some parks together.  This is Buttermilk State Park at the South end of town.  Jonas was a little stiff that day, so we didn't do any big hikes, but we wandered around, looked at botanical and geological features of the park and discussed the benefits of public land. 

The Chopper and I have a few routines.  One of them is lighting the fire when it goes out.  He gets super excited about it.  So do I.  I had to stop waving my arms and jumping up and down to take this picture.

Another of the Earth's elements that The Dude likes is water.  We're all but done with our first round of swim lessons.  He can fall of the wall, hang onto the wall, dunk under water, almost float on his back by himself, and generally get along in a contented fashion in the pool.  Hoping to have him doing the front crawl by canoe season.

Swimming makes us nappy.

This amazing piece of artwork was done by Zhora... all on her own.  The kid has good taste.  Also, note that she ALWAYS puts the colours of the rainbow in the correct order.

This is from a walk at Taughannock a couple weeks ago.  We were on our way out to Pat's.  It was a bit overcast and not great for pictures, but the river and the falls never disappoint.  

Little man in the back saver.  We don't use it often as we both enjoy carrying him, but on longer walks where the path will permit, Bugger gets a buggie.

My beautiful wife contemplating the tangled bank.

Not even the majesty of nature competes with the Mama

Sarah took some shots of the ice encrusted branches.

Sarah swears that the drooling means he's thinking.

We took a trip Long Pond State Forest to scope out the camping.  We plan for this to be our first canoe trip.  The water is too hard to canoe on right now, but Jonas enjoyed making doggie snow angels.

We walked out about 50 yards before a loud cracking sound sent us scurrying back to terra ferma.  There were a bunch of people out in the middle of the lake ice fishing, so I'm sure it was safe.  Still, the idea of us all crashing through the ice together seemed an unreasonable event for the day.

Sarah has some great pictures of Emmett's first swing experience from Stewart Park.  I think she posted them on Viber.  This is from the merry go round.

I've wanted to do this (above) ever since seeing this (below).

The kid finally learned to hold his head up and grew big enough to keep his face above the pack.  Took him long enough.  Good thing I'm patient.

Holy cow!  This is from four days ago!  I'm caught up.  Of course, I had to leave our about 36,000 pictures of EmC Harrington, but hopefully there's enough here to give you the idea.  Some day, I'll put all the photos together like a flip book and we'll watch an animation of his life.

On Sunday, last, I texted all four of the people I know, excluding Vinnie because he lives in Boston, and Nathan because he lives in Ohio, and invited them to bring their clones to the local cemetery for some sweet sledding action.  It was a pretty good plan.  Above, Zhora, Nora, and Charlotte share a ride.

The big race.  Zach cheated, as usual.  Jevon appears to be putting on the brakes here.  It was Mag's first time sledding, so maybe they were taking it easy.  More likely, Jevon didn't want to appear to care as much as Zach obviously did about the win.

Trudging back up the hill to the full gang.  Note that Zach has taken up the ubiquitous standing sledding posture.

Jevon went for a more informal approach.

A second trip out with The Barnacle Baby.  This time Arlo came along with us.  I always knew where he was because The Dude's head and body would swivel around to watch him.

That is, until Big Baby fell asleep.

Next up: Grammy and Pop come to visit.