Snuggles, playing and Easter Baskets

Corbin wandered upstairs the other day and when he has been gone a while I had Adam go and check on him. This is what he found :-) Gryffin has been very patient with Corbin lately, as long as Corbin is not screaming at him or chasing him. Now whenever Gryffin lets him snuggle, Corbin says "hear Gryffin purring."

Corbin's new obsession."Train tracks train tracks. Play trains. Help Bridge. Mommy play trains now."

"What are you doing Corbin?"
"Shopping mommy."
"What are you shopping for?"
"Fruit."

We don't celebrate Easter in a religious sense. But it's a good time to celebrate spring, rebirth, eggs, friends and family. So this year we decided to see how Corbin did with some egg dying. Adam saved out all our light colored eggs from the chickens. We headed to Fred Myer to pick up some egg dye. Corbin was fascinated with the box. He studied it pretty carefully. The whole thing was actually pretty anti-climatic. You just drop the egg in and wait for it to change color. He kept wanting to see the eggs. And then touch them when they were all done. But it was still fun and now we have multi-colored hard boiled eggs to eat!

Adam is so awesome. He wanted to create a treasure hunt for Corbin to find his Easter basket. We went out on Sat. night for a kid free dinner while a friend stayed home with Corbin (Thanks Liliana!). When we came home I went straight to bed. Adam stayed up and cut out eggs with directions on them, put together his Easter Basket, and had everything ready to go for Easter morning. Corbin came downstairs and we took him the kitchen to begin his hunt. He did great! I tried to get a video of the whole thing but the disk ran out of space right before he found his Basket. It was pretty fun to watch him do it. Once he found his basket, he went "Wow!"

And here is his basket. Full of Adam's old Hot Wheels and eggs. We also had two new rakes and a shovel for working in the garden that went along with it. Being out parent's children, the plastic eggs were filled with nuts, raisins, cheerios, and animal crackers. No candy for this kid yet.

Tonight before I put Corbin to bed I told him that on Thursday we are taking the railing off his crib to make it a big boy bed. He instantly grabbed the railing and said it was stuck. I said we would take it off with tools. He said "Sammy's tools?" Sam is Melissa's husband and I guess they have gone to see his tools. I said, no Daddy's tools. He kept repeating "take railing off. Big boy bed. Not stuck. Tools. On Thursday." He seemed pretty excited. He is now in his crib repeating that whole sequence. Every once in a while he says "take railing off, next week, Thursday."

Spring colds

Today we did some spring cleaning. We sold a few things on Craig's list, organized a few spaces, and shopped around for some French doors for the office. Corbin and I also have spring colds. Yuck. He is one snotty mess. And you can tell he just doesn't feel good, especially today. But we did have some fun these past couple of days with buddies and outside.

Brody, Corbin, and Alden looking out the window at the street sweeper. They proceeded to run to the sliding glass door to watch it go the other way.

We put Corbin's swing back up outside. He was pretty excited about it and must have swung for at least a half our maybe even more. We had to take frequent brakes for blowing our noses though. It was so nice out that we were out in our short sleeves!

Our plum tree. I hasn't yet produces plums for us yet. If there are no plums this year, it's coming out. It takes up a funny space in the back yard that could be used for much more than a non-fruitng fruit tree.

Even the chickens got out and scratched around. Check out our garlic! Wowie!

Hair cut #2

Corbin's got a new doo! And a short one too:-) I still need to cut a few straggling hairs but I got most of them from this squiggly guy. Spring is here!

Spring biking

Corbin was pretty excited. He got to go on two bike rides yesterday. The first ride of the season in the Chariot with Daddy to the library and then around the block on his own bike.

Video entertainment

Corbin is a talking machine these days. He is constantly amazing me with what he understands and is putting together. I love just hearing what he has to say without any prompts. He is also getting very opinionated. I keep trying to get him on video asking for waffles, which is now his favorite food. He loves them when Adam makes them, so I thought that I would get some Eggos, so that when he asked for them, it would be quick instead of half hour to make them. Big mistake. I think Eggo's have crack in them. He is addicted. One of these days I will get it on video. For now, enjoy these!

Vancouver 2010: Nordic Combined

Ok, last Olympic post. And for me the most exciting day. Adam did a great job here of putting to words our entire Olympic adventure but on this post you will hear about our day watching the Nordic Combined Team event.

We went up to Whistler to see the Team event for Nordic Combined. Nordic Combined is a combination of ski jumping and cross country skiing. It's a strange combination of two sports. The distance and style points for a jumper are then converted into time for the skiers. So the number one jumper leaves for the x-country first (different skis), the next jumper is a certain amount of seconds behind the first skier. Whoever wins the x-country is the overall winner. Sometimes the best jumpers are not the best skiers, therefore it can really change once the x-country skiing gets going. For those of you who don't know, NC is very close to my heart for many reasons. I grew up around it, doing it, watching it, and supporting my brother doing it. When I was little my brother and I both competed in NC through the Andover Outing Club. I stopped somewhere around middle school. Jed kept going. And he excelled in it. After high school he went to train full time for the US Ski team. He skied and was teammates with almost all of the current Olympic team. In 1999, he, Johnny Spillane, Billy Demong, and Carl VanLoan won the team event at Junior Worlds. Two of these guys were competing when we went to watch, Johnny and Billy. Earlier in the Olympics Johnny became the first American to get an Olympic medal since the beginning of the Olympics. American's used to be at the bottom of the results for years, until the last 10 years, where they have started to climb to the podium at world events. They were going to be contenders for another medal in the team event.

It was so fun to be going to see something that I know and have been around so much of my childhood. We also decided to take Corbin with us on this day. We thought he would have a lot of fun seeing everything. It would be a long day but we hoped he would do well. As soon as we got off the bus and were going through security, Adam noticed Billy's mom. We went to re-introduce ourselves and wish them luck. Because we had Corbin with us, we got some special treatment and got a ride the shuttle up to the ski jumps instead of walk the mile uphill. We got to the jumps and instantly saw Johnny's family and a bunch of other US supporters. We went and said hello. It was so fun to be amongst such an enthusiastic crowd cheering for Americans!

Corbin had so much fun just being able to run around. Because there weren't seats, Corbin could just run around and play in the snow. He loved waving the flag around and running in circles.

Volunteers smoothing out the landing hill of the jumps. When we were little we would have to "pack" the jumps by all wearing our skis and packing down the landing hill instead of having it groomed. Then they would rake it out after the jumpers.

Getting into the American spirit.

Towards the end of the jumps Corbin was tired! He just looked at the pack and said "in pack". And put his head down and fell asleep within a few minutes. He slept through all of us screaming and cheering on Billy and Johnny.

After the jumps the US was in 2nd place, only 2 seconds behind Finland. Yahoo!

Corbin managed to stay asleep on our shuttle ride and for a total of about 45 minutes before he woke up, just as it started snowing. After that he wanted to get out and play again. We had almost 2 hours between events, so we had plenty of time to play around before the x-country started.

We found a hill and he just started sliding down on his bottom. He was having so much fun. There were some contests and other big things going on behind us, but he didn't care, he was just having the best time sliding. Then we found an empty plastic bottle and started playing snow soccer, kicking it between peoples legs and saying "goal!"

We were able to get right on the fence as the racers came into the stadium. We were under the flags where we could still see the big screen, for when they went out of view.

The race was so exciting and we were cheering so loud during it, that we didn't take any pictures of the x-country race. We were shaking out cow bells and waving our flag and screaming, "GO BRETT, GO TODD, GO JOHNNY, GO BILLY!!!! GO USA!!!!" At one point, Corbin was not as happy so as he was screaming out of frustration, we were screaming out of excitement. Right at the finish, he started to get really fussy, but a banana seemed the exact fix for him.

Billy was the last American skier for the team. The US stayed in 2nd or 1st place the whole time. On the last leg it was Billy and an Austrian. Billy tried to take the lead on the last hill but his skis just weren't quite fast enough and the Austrian passed him as they came into the stadium. We were cheering so loudly. The Americans got a silver medal!!! It was so exciting. We stayed after the race to go to the flower ceremony.

I actually got all teary as they came to get their flowers. I think I know what is must have been like for their families, as I have been a family member before. To know how hard the athletes work and how much their families support them. It's truly amazing. And to "know" these guys. They are my brothers good friends!

Brett Camerota, Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane, and Billy Demong.
Wow! I was so proud to be an American supporter of NC that day! It was an amazing Olympics for the US NC team. In their last event, Billy won gold and Johnny got his third silver!

It was such a fun day. Corbin was such a trooper. He did really well, considering we left the house at 5:20am and didn't get home till 8:15 pm, and two long bus rides and lots of stimulus. It will be a day I will remember forever. Good job Vancouver! Good job Americans! Good job Nordic Combined!

Vancouver 2010: Biathlon

Our second day at Whistler was dedicated to biathlon. We got to see two races, the Men's 15 km Mass Start and Women's 12.5 km Mass Start.

Not that the XC and speed skating weren't festive and well-supported, but the biathlon seemed by far the most vocal and crazily cheered of the events we attended (though Nordic Combined was a special case). The King of Norway was there, supposedly. And lots of Norwegians. And Swedes and Italians and French and Germans and Czechs and Russians and Finns and many others. And Canadians. And Americans!

The view from our hill, which was very full and very convenient for watching.

The targets

Us

Flagpole of the man with the very loud dinner bell. The Norwegians near us called it a church bell.

I found the race particularly exciting. It's maybe my new favorite winter sport. Some biathlon races have staggered starts. I saw one on TV and it was so difficult to tell who was winning and who was close, etc. These races were mass starts, so the winner was the winner. It was crazy to watch the shooting and see the lead group dwindle as skiers missed targets. US racer Tim Burke was in 9th after two shootings, but missed several on the first standing shoot, and fell way back thanks to his penalty laps.

The men's start

Russia takes gold

And then celebrates

The women start

I was also amazed that some of the medalists had skied penalties, and still beat out some racers who had shot clean on all targets, or at least had less penalties. The penalty lap is 150 m, and supposedly takes about 20 seconds to ski.

Anyway, it was another beautiful day, with two exciting races. I want to see more mass start biathlons. I'll be keeping my eyes out. I can see why biathlon is so popular in other countries. The way the race can change in a moment is unique and exhilarating. It's something I could see Americans embracing, since it is fast, exciting, and involves guns. It probably won't happen, but it could, and should. It's a fun sport.