Getting back to blogging

I have been trying to stay off the computer so much when Scott is home which is a good thing overall but that means I get behind in my blogging so I hope to catch up over the next couple days when Scott is working in Baton Rouge. Here is a picture to get you started of Scott in the desert in Dubai. Most of the time he was in the city but one day he went out with a guy from the station to see what the rest of the country looked like. Scott said it looked a lot like this as soon as you left the city.

Lion Country Safari

Yesterday we all went to Lion Country Safari, which is a special kind of zoo. Actually it's two parks side by side. The first part is a drive through zoo where the animals roam free and can walk right up to your car. Most of the animals stayed clear of the car except for one Ostrich who was challenging every car that drove by. I think we were driving on his part of the road.

The second part of the park was actually a bit more fun. There were rides which we all enjoyed and opportunities to feed Lorries, Budgies and Sheep. Chance loveed every bit of it, In the above picture Chance is riding a train around Dinosaur Land and in the photo below my Mom and Chance are riding an elephant much like the Dumbo ride at Disney. They go around in a circle then up and down as you pull the lever. Chance and I rode it once it took him a minute to figure out how to make it go up but once he did he loved being able to control the elephant all himself. On the way out he rode once more with Grammy. This picture isn't very good but I picking it because you can see how much fun they are having.

Chance and I rode the Merry-Go-Round too. well he rode and I spotted him. The weather was wonderful for this outing yesterday, on the Merry-Go-Round there was a great breeze coming off the nearby lake.

We took a boat ride on the lake too but I don't have any good pictures of the experience. The boat took us around the monkey islands giving us an up-close look at them.

Chance also road a ferris wheel for the first time yesterday. We have never really had the opportunity to ride one with him but yesterday there it was so we got on. There was a smile on his face the whole time as you can see in the above picture and the one below for that matter.


The three photos below are our animal feeding experiences. The first one I am holding a cup of nectar and the Lorry is sitting on my hand eating. Chance didn't hold the food for this one but he had a good time watching them eat. It was amazing watching them all fly down for the food and as soon as it was gone they could tell just by looking.


Her we are feeding sheep in the petting zoo. Chance was funny petting them then feeding them. I taught him to always keep his fingers flat then let the sheep eat the food.

In this last picture Chance is holding a stick with food for the budgies with me just holding on to make sure it doesn't hit the ground. These little guys fly in from all over to eat the seeds we were holding. I think feeding the birds was the best part of this whole trip. It's tons of fun.

In Florida

Hello everyone, we are in Florida and by we I mean Chance and Rayna. Scott is still holding up in Dubai. He has been exploring the area ande eating lots of interesting food that sounds really tasty. We finally got our video phone to work and so we have been able to talk and see each other for the past couple days which is really cool because you don't just ahve to talk about something you can actually show each other.


So far we have just been hanging out for the most part. Chance enjoys having all the attention from everyone in the house and having all the space to run around outside. Kristy and her boyfriend Rob have RockBand drums, guitar and microphone so they pulled them out for Chance to play. He really liked playing the drums and is getting better just in the last couple days. This first picture is Chance playing drums and Rob playing guitar. I haven't played yet but I am looking forward to playing later this week one day when Kristy has off work and we can all play together

Last night we all went out to eat so this second picture is Grandma and Chance riding in the car to the restaurant. Chance and Scott have a funny thing they do when reading bedtime stories, for dramatic effect after certain lines they say "bum,bum,bum" it is very cute. Yesterday in the car Chance as we would pass something on the road Chance would say "Dinosaurs eat trees, bum,bum,bum!" then in a minute we would pass a house and he would say "Dinosaurs eat houses, bum,bum,bum!" this went on for most of the car ride. It was very funny.

On the same car ride I asked Chance to smile so I could take our picture and this picture above is what I got. When I posted it on Facebook Scott pointed out that this is in fact his smile. The same smile Scott gives when people ask him to smile when he doesn't really want his picture taken.

This morning we all walked down to the gate to get the newspaper. Grandma is having more trouble getting around these days so she has a new walker the ones with the seat. So on the way back to the house Chance hitched a ride as can be seen in the above picture. And last but not least I got my hair cut which you can see in the picture below.

Dubai

Scott headed out to Dubai yesterday. He will be arriving there Tuesday night about midnight. He is working at a local TV station there till the end of the month. talking on the telephone isn't as practical as it is in the states so he will be posting as much as he can about his travels on his facebook page. Which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=1441711390


you have to be a member of Facebook to see everything but if you are interested in following his travels that's the place to do it. I will share as much as I can here too.

Snow Quest

With all this Winter weather that has been floating around recently we decided to go on a quest to find ourselves some snow. Thursday night it was cold and rainy here but there were places in town that saw snow flurries and just outside town there was snow that stuck overnight. Scott had to work Friday so we had planned to wait and go searching Saturday but when he came home from work early we packed up and started driving. According to the weather map it was still snowing in Mississippi so that is where we headed. I-10 to I-59 straight into the heart of MS. About an hours drive later there were little white patches on the ground and within an hour and a half there was enough to play in so we pulled off an exit in Hattiesburg, MS.

Scott saw the convention center which made the perfect spot for playing. Lots of empty parking lots to park and lots of open grassy places to play. We bundled ourselves up and went to play in the snow! We built a snow man who we named Clyde:

Chance liked rolling the little ball of snow all around to make a big ball for the snowman. We also had a mini snowball fight:'


In which mostly whoever had the camera got hit with lots of snowballs. Chance thought this was funny though because we didn't really have the right kind of gloves for snow his little snowballs kept sticking to his gloves, he didn't seem to mind.


Scott decided to man the camera while Chance and I made snow angels. We did all the quintessential playing in the snow things because we don't get to play in snow very often plus all those things are tons of fun. We played in the snow for about an hour before the sun was starting to go down, our feet and fingers were cold and wet and the snow was starting to get slushy so it was time to go back home.

Understandably Chance didn't want to go, he really didn't want to leave the snowman behind, he asked if we could take him with us and kept telling us he didn't want to leave him alone. So we told him that Clyde would be able to play with all the other snowmen that were scattered around the park (that other people had built throughout the day) and that we could fill up a cup that we had will snow to take with us. That made him feel better. For a little guy who lives as far South as he does he has been very lucky to see as much snow as he had, every year in fact. The first year in Portland on Christmas day (how crazy is that?) then last year it snowed right here at the house enough to play in and then this year only an hour and a half drive away there was snow. That is lucky.

What's taking so long?

OK, so I have been falling behind on my posting and for that I apologize. I didn't know how much I post from my phone until I couldn't anymore. Because I have used all my photo space on blogger...anyway I am going to try to get better at that. That being said I have a few things that have happened over the past week or so that I want to share. First off:



In case you haven't heard (are you living in a cave? and if so how is it that you are reading this?) The Saints won the Superbowl!!! We have been paying attention to the Saints since we moved here, watching games off and on but this season we started watching all the games form the beginning and of course we were watching on Sunday. It was absolutely amazing the odds were stacked against them but we all had faith and they pulled it off. Actually they did better than that they actually owned the game in the second half. As soon as they won the game there were fireworks flying overhead and horns honking. The police were driving through the streets with their lights on just for the heck of it. People were yelling and screaming from our house we could hear people shouting Who Dat and music playing. Everyone was in such a good mood, my Mom and cousin Brenda were up for the weekend so Scott and I were able to take a walk to see what was going on after the game. We walked for about half an hour mostly non stop into the Quarter to Jackson Square then back to the house. There were people everywhere, pouring out of houses, hotels and bars. There were so many people in the streets police were taking it upon themselves to close the streets and direct traffic around. It's a great place and time when the people on the streets partying take precedent over the cars driving on them. On one street there wasn't anywhere to redirect the traffic so the drivers just got out of their cars and started dancing in the street with everyone else. People pulled out their instruments and started playing wonderful jam session renditions of When The Saints Go Marching In. As we walked farther into the Quarter the people started piling up, we were shoulder to shoulder with artsy hipsters and buff jocks, dirty circus kids and suited up couples, they were from Uptown and the Treme, the Quarter and Midcity and the Burbs too. straight and gay and every color in between. Truly a great thing to be a part of. Follow this link then click the play button to hear music Scott recorded while we were out on our after Superbowl walk.

Visit to the Firestation.

If you remember a while back Chance and I went to the fire station with the Metairie Moms group. That fire station was out in Jefferson Parish so this time I organized a visit to a fire station right here in New Orleans for our own group. The fire station itself pretty much just looks like a house except it has three big garages and no front door otherwise it fits perfectly into the residential neighborhood where it is located.


All the kids had a great time climbing all over the fire trucks. The firemen were very nice answering any questions we had and playing with the little ones. They opened up both their ladder truck and their pumper truck for everyone to look inside and climb around in. Everyone got a junior fireman's hat and all the parents got lots of fire safety information. Chance liked to drive the fire engine. He sat in the front seat with his hat on trying to turn the big steering wheel. Everyone tried to push all the buttons, and there are a lot of buttons, they must not work unless the key is in or something because no one ever made the ladder go up or the siren turn on.

He's almost the size of the tire

The firemen even invited our group back in the summer, when they turn on the fire hydrant and let the neighborhood kids play in the water. So we will be back in a few months to play in the water with the firefighters.