Some of the animals

Bison
Young ElkYoung Elk

Old Faithful

Old Faithful is the small steaming thing in the back round.

This is a photo of Old Faithful erupting...basically a bunch of hot water that made a huge plume of steam!!

more at Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park

In the snow coach.
out the portal of the snow coach


We went to Yellowstone National Park with Levi and Julia. We went on a guided tour in a snow coach. Yup we rode out into a snow filled park on a groomed trail in a big van like thing on skis and treads. The day was clear and cold. But we did not mind because we were all bundled up. The trip was very cool and we learned lots of interesting things about the park...like how the whole thing is a giant volcano that could blow at any time and do way more damage then Mt. Saint Hellenes. We saw lots of thermo activity in the form of mud pots, hot springs, guessers and one other thing that I can't remember. We also saw lots of wild life bison, elk, swans, ducks, geese, and coyote. And yes we did see Old Faithful erupt. Enjoy all the photos we have to share.

Eating

Elsie is progressing slowly on the solid foods front. She has tried 3 kinds of cereal, all but one of her vegtables and a few fruits, these seem to be her favorites so far though. I was reading in a baby book about what a 7 month old should be able to do. It was a short list and Elsie could do all of the things except feed herself a cracker. I was so upset that I had never given her a chance to feed herself a cracker!! So after buying some teething biscuits and handing her one I was no longer upset. Of course she had no problem picking up an object and inserting it in her mouth. The only difference with this object is it can be eaten and it tends to get really gooey! Why did I even worry?

The Big Tub

Elsie has graduated to the big tub. She did not like it that much at first but now is really enjoying the freedom of movement. For now her favorite bath time activities are splashing and eating any toys that are in sight.

And after bath time she gets to use this great turtle towel she got for Christmas.

Mobility

Yup that is right mobility is the newest thing in the Shumway home. Elsie started by pushing herself backwards. Every once in a while I would come into the living room to find her legs disappearing under the couch! I would say this and rolling were her sole means of mobility for about a month. But now she has mastered the next step. No she can not crawl yet but she is getting very close to it. She pulls with her arms and pushes with her legs to move forward, I think it is called the commando crawl. So now anything on the floor is fair game!!!

In this picture she is pushing herself up onto her knees where she can stay for a bit and then collapse back to the tummy. It is amazing how fast she can pick up a new trick.

Our blog

Our blog would not be complete without another series of cute pictures of Elsie....not that there is anything else on this blog! What I mean is here is Elsie in a bunch of cute outfits including a few pairs of cute shoes!!

Sock monster

One of Will's late Christmas present was some warm socks. He decided that the best thing to do with them was to put them on Elsie's arms and legs. He created a sock monster.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas day...it all began with the stockings.
Then there were plenty of presents to open. Elsie did a very good job at opening her own gifts. The first one she got was a very noisy one and she was not sure what to do with it. So she moved it around and around until Will started to pull the paper off. Then seeing a chance to eat something yummy she went for the paper and pulled.




The morning progressed with Elsie trying to eat just about every present and the paper that came off of them too. Luckily Will was too quick for her and took all the paper she tore off before it ended up in her mouth. All in all it was a wonderful morning of gift receiving.





The rest of Christmas was also good but we do not have any photos to document it. So you are just going to have to read on if you want to know what we did. After lazing around all morning and eating a light lunch we went to Independence Missouri. There is a LDS visitors center there and we wanted to go and see the nativity sets they had on display. It turns out that the collection belongs to one woman. She had done a lot of traveling and as she did so she collected nativity sets. She has around 500 of them! But we only saw about half of them. They were very beautiful and very diverse...they were made from all sorts of things glass, painted rocks, metal, straw and bees wax to name a few. After looking at the nativities we drove back towards home and went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home. I surprised myself that I was not upset about canceling the big Christmas dinner. We decided to have the ham on New Years day instead.

Christmas Eve

We decided to follow one of Adah's family tradition of opening one present each on Christmas Eve. This turn out to be a good first try for Elsie. She pulled on the paper a little but got a lot of help to find her 2 new books.

Our little Christmas tree

We went to find a Christmas tree last Monday night...and it did not go too well. First of all the tree place we went to did not take credit cards. Then we go to Walmart and they are all out of their smaller trees and so we ended up inside looking at fake trees. We picked the smallest one they had and spent a whopping $10. We went home and pulled it out of the box and set it all up. It turns out it is barely taller than Elsie. We decorated it and we think it is very cute...what do you think?

Our adventure

One of the snowy days we had we decided to take a little walk. It was fun and Elsie seemed to like it just fine though the wind was cold.

Isn't she so cute

I think these photos speak for themselves.

First snow in Kansas

Elsie actually saw her first snow in Vermont but we did not make a big deal out of it there. Here are a few pictures of the first snow we have seen in Kansas though. Since then we have had several other little storms and an ice storm too. But it gets warm and sunny enough in between these storms to melt most of the white stuff. What this boils down too is we have only had a inch or two of snow on the ground at once!! But it does look like we will be having a white Christmas!

Our big announcement!!!

Our most happy thing that has happened to us this year besides Elsie's birth is...Will has finally finished his MBA. That is right Will is now a happy graduate of Auburn University with his Masters in Business Administration. And to celebrate I thought I would show off Elsie in her new shirt!

Time for solids

These photos are from the fist tastes of solid food Elsie eat.

We have finally taken he plunge. Elsie started with rice cereal at the beginning of December. She now prefers oatmeal cereal and absolutely loves the sweet potatoes and squash we have given her. She is great at swallowing now but it took her a few weeks to get the hang of it. We have tried to get her to drink from a cup a few times and while she loves to play with the cup and bite it she has not done much swallowing of the water.

Gingerbread fun

Chrissy and I spent some time at Maude's house one day. It was a fun filled afternoon. First my four year old niece Abby did my hair in 3 pony tails. You can see her handy work here. Then I got to help construct a Gingerbread house. We spent lots of time on the candy tasting and had to watch out because each time we got one so did Abby!! In the end it turned out beautiful. A few days later we started to eat the candy off the house!

Aunt Chrarity

Aunt Charity loves Elsie and thinks she is soooooo cute, just like everyone else. It was great to have her come visit us in Vermont. We enjoyed several cozy days of watching the snow fall out side while we where toasty warm inside.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is the cutest outfit that Auntie Chrissy gave us for Thanksgiving. The feet even say gobble gobble on them!!! We had a good Thanksgiving in Vermont with Adah's family. Charity joined us for the feast as well. Then we went home to our rental place and relaxed the rest of the evening.