Ellie Discovered a New Tactic

Eliana has discovered the "if mom says no, ask dad" tactic. Twice this evening she tried that one out. We'll see if our quick attempt to crack down on that worked.

Skiing with Eliana for the Second Time

I took Ellie skiing for the first time two weekends ago at Bridger Bowl. We had a really good time.

This past weekend, Elizabeth was gone to Seattle for 4 days, so I invited my folks out to help watch Eliana. One of those days, we headed up to Bridger again. I commissioned my dad to take pictures while we skied. Thanks, Dad!

(I'm including this just to freak out Mommom. Please observe the grip Ellie has on the bar.)

I really don't know how to teach a kid how to ski other than to take her to the top and tell her to point her skis down the hill. That's pretty much what we've done both times.

Ellie did pretty well, but she refused to snow plow. She was all about the going parallel down the hill and then screaming out for me to stop her when she felt uncomfortable. She really hasn't gotten the hang of turning yet, either. On the first few runs on the second day, she'd just spin around until she was going backwards and then she's do an excellent reverse snowplow to come to a stop. She told me she needed new skis that would go straight. It looked to me like the rental shop might've given her longer skis than she had on her first day up, so we went back to check. They said we had the shortest skis they carried, so we headed to the lodge's deck for some sun, food, and hot chocolate. Afterward, things went better. Ellie's favorite part of skiing so far has been the hula hoop set up on the bunny slope for kids to duck under.

(Pay no attention to the magically appearing goggles in the third frame. I'm sure those events occurred in exactly the sequence they're presented.)

While we were skiing, Ellie kept wanting to find some way to exert independence. She seemed to decide that the lift was the place to do it, so we routinely would have disagreements as we were trying to load the chair because she did not want to ride on the same chair. She wanted to ride it by herself. I laughingly mentioned that to the lifty, who told me that they'd let a kid ride by herself if the parent approved. I didn't see that coming.

What was particularly funny to me is that Ellie seems really old and tall compared to most of the kids on the bunny slope. Bozeman is such a ski crazy town that most of the kids Ellie's age are out there skiing by themselves, ripping it up. You basically can't find kids Ellie's age on the bunny slope unless they drop by to practice skiing backwards or to ski with their younger siblings.

This is a much more typical sample of what you'll find on the bunny slope at Bridger.

See, one of the great things about Bozeman is that I look distinctly non-crazy (in comparison) for teaching my 3.5 year old to ski. I could have been this guy:

First Family Snowshoe

On Presidents' Day we went for a little family snowshoe, our first time snowshoeing all together! We bought Eliana some used children's snowshoes and have been looking forward to teaching her how to use them and getting out into the snow as a family. She wasn't sure about walking in the deep snow at first, but we let her walk along a packed down trail and she was much more excited about it then. She did a great job!

Along our walk, Eliana was very excited to find a bug in the snow and she wanted it to play with her. We tried to convince her that bugs don't really like to play with people, but she wouldn't hear of it and carried the poor thing around for a while! We finally convinced her to put it back in the snow and let it go find some food and shelter.

Ellie's Eye Mask

Eliana got an eye mask in her stocking for Christmas. One night she decided she needed to wear it to bed. It cracked me up!

From Ellie's Eye Mask

From Ellie's Eye Mask

Sledding

Leif has been taking Eliana and her friend Corinne sledding several times over the past few weeks. It looks like they have a good time!!

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

(This picture cracks me up!)

From Ellie and Corinne Sledding

'Twas the night before Christmas

Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas Eve! Here are some pictures of our place this Christmas season!

Snowflakes!

Ellie and I made snowflakes a week or two ago, and it is so fun to see them hanging in the window against the sunrise in the morning. I think they're beautiful! She was even able to make a couple of them all by herself! Here she is hard at work:

And the finished snowflake:

Christmas Pictures

Tonight, before we put Ellie in bed, she got to put on her pretty Christmas dress and have her picture taken in front of the Christmas tree. She was pretty excited to sit there and have her picture taken this year, and was mostly cooperative. That's more than we can say for the last couple years! It was sweet, and I'm looking forward to getting the pictures from Costco tomorrow. =D In the meantime, here's one of the reject pictures, before we got all the lighting figured out... she's still pretty adorable, eh?

And when I went over to fix her hair in between shots (because there was much silliness involved, which lead to messed up hair!) we paused for a smile while Leif clicked a shot. Just a sweet little impromptu photo, but I love it!

Hope you all are having a great week before Christmas! Leif is officially off work for a couple weeks, so we are enjoying having him home!

Interviews with Eliana

Since I now know how to post videos again, I figured I'd give you some interviews with Eliana. These are from a few weeks ago. =D

Parties R Us

There's a relatively new play place in Bozeman called Parties R Us that we checked out earlier in the week. It's full of those inflatable obstacle courses and bouncy houses and slides and a really fun way to get some energy out on cold days, which we've been having a lot of lately! Just for kicks I tried out the video camera on my new phone (which uploads the videos directly to YouTube for me - woohoo!), so here's Eliana having fun on the inflatables!

If you're local, I recommend heading over there sometime. It's fun!

Christmas Lights

Last night just before bed I put Ellie in her pajamas and slippers, got her some chocolate milk and two cookies, wrapped her in a blanket all snug in the car, and put on some Christmas music. Then we went out to look look at Christmas lights in our neighborhood.

We drove around, ooh-ing and aaah-ing, noticing which houses had LOTS of lights, and which only had a few. We voted on which houses were decorated the "best" and had winners in two categories: the MOST lights, and the prettiest/classiest. Here they are...

We stayed close to home, just driving around River Rock, but we had a very nice time. By the time we pulled up the driveway into the garage at home again, this is what Ellie looked like:

Sound asleep, with cookie smeared on her face. I love it.

Ellie's Musical Color Analysis

So a while back I mentioned that Ellie likes her bedtime music because it is "yellow and black." The yellow and black music is Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet. Today Leif was listening to Cloud Cult's Meaning of Eight and Ellie came in saying she didn't like that music. I asked what color it was. She said brown.

She's consistent in saying that Abigail Washburn is black and yellow. I'll have to pay attention and see if Cloud Cult is consistently brown. And ugly. And unpleasant to listen to, according to her. (Though Leif and I both enjoy it.)

Christmas Stroll 2009

Slippery sidewalks, falling snowflakes, people shuffling downtown...
Yummy food, but it's too cold to eat....
(sung to the tune of Silver Bells)

That pretty much sums up the Stroll last night! It was 14 degrees out, but people still showed up to walk the streets of downtown Bozeman and enjoy celebrating the holiday season with food.

We stopped first in a little place called La Tinga for some Mexican food. It was pretty good. We had a few little tacos (pork, steak, and chicken/potato) and warmed up a smidge before going on our way. Ellie expressed her dislike for the crowds by informing me that there were "too many people in this place!!"

At La Tinga, the lady gave Ellie a popsicle that she tried to devour, despite the cold. She did a pretty good job eating it with gloved hands, but it made her cold, so we made another stop to warm up. This time we stopped into F11, Leif's favorite downtown camera shop. Ellie finished off her popsicle and Leif played with camera equipment, using me as his subject.

After a bit of a warm up, we headed back down Main Street. Due to the cold and the slippery sidewalks, Leif ended up carrying Ellie pretty much the entire time.

(Aside from the snot that I'm going to ask Leif to photoshop off Ellie's face, this is my favorite picture from the evening!)

More walking, more cold, and another stop by a booth for some fry bread left us needing another warm place to stop in... so we stopped by Bangtail's new location on Main Street! For those of you who have visited Bozeman, you might recognize the building as the "horse" building. Of course, I live here and when Leif mentioned that they moved into the horse building I had no idea what he was talking about. Ha ha! But we stopped in there and looked at skis for Ellie (because bike shops are also ski shops around here) and finished off the fry bread and warmed up.



After Bangtail we decided it was time for us to head back down Main Street to the car. It was just too cold and too late to make the full loop. So we shuffled back down the street, stopping once to buy a pulled pork sandwich (which I scarfed as we walked - I've never eaten a hamburger bun that cold before!!) and once to gawk at the S'mores stand. How do you make S'mores in sub-freezing temps? Like this!

Our last stop before hitting the car was at The Leaf and Bean, a local coffee / tea house. We ordered some coffee for Leif, Montana Gold tea for me, and some hot lemonade for Eliana. It was too hot to drink while we were in there, but made for a nice way to warm our hands!

Despite the cold, I was glad to get to attend the Christmas Stroll this year. 2 years ago I was in Texas, last year I was sick... I was not going to miss it this year! And once again, I'm glad we didn't! It's one of the Bozeman traditions worth attending.