The Great Lakes

This is pretty random, but for a while now I've been wanting to do a post about the Great Lakes.  I think it's pretty cool that our family has now visited all five of the Great Lakes.  And we did it unintentionally. This was not something we set out to do, but amazingly our travels have taken us to all five of these beauties.

Lake Huron

 

Lake Ontario

After a long day at Niagara Falls the kids fell asleep in the car when we stopped here thus the lack of pictures.

 

Lake Erie

         

Lake Michigan

The first picture is in Chicago on the south side of the lake.

The second picture is a couple of years later on the north side of the lake.

 

Lake Superior

  

Lake Placid

We ventured about two hours north yesterday into the Adirondack Mountains to Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.

Here's Gabe and Porter watching the bobsledders come down the track.

   

 This bobsled was used by the German team in the 1932 Olympics.

We kept telling the kids that Uncle Taylor had done the Skeleton race on this track.  In fact, in 2003 he took 6th place at Nationals in Lake Placid and the next year he took 3rd place at Nationals in Park City.  He was really good, but he chose to leave the sport and his Olympic dreams to serve a two year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  What a good kid!
Here's my kids posing on the Skeleton sled for Uncle Taylor!

I tried to find a Skeleton picture or video of my brother to show the kids, but I couldn't find any and I don't have my external hard drive with me that has my photos on it.  However, I randomly came across this video of him on YouTube.  Even though it's not a Skeleton video, you get a taste of how cool he is.  Can you tell I love my little bro?  I'm kind of proud of him (and glad he hasn't broken his neck).

Baby Update

We had another ultrasound done on the baby today.  The doctor confirmed that there is a bright spot on the baby's heart.  Bright spots can be indicators of Down Syndrome or Trisomy 18, but usually there are other indicators as well.  No other red flags came up on either ultrasound which is good.  Since this is the only thing the doctors found chances are good that we will have a perfectly healthy, normal baby.  They recommended having blood work and an amniocentesis done to check for genetic abnormalities, but we declined these tests.  It's hard to know what to do.  I know many people who have had false positives with these tests.

We went through almost this exact same scenario with Porter, except the abnormality was a two vessel umbilical cord.  Which by itself, was no problem, but it's often seen in babies with chromosomal disorders.  With him we did ultrasounds every three weeks to monitor his growth, but no further genetic testing.  Thankfully, he is perfect (aside from his superhuman monkey powers), but it made for a  very anxious feeling during delivery wondering whether or not he would be okay.

What would you do?  Would you have the genetic testing done or would you just wait and see?  Obviously, we are going with the wait and see method, but I'm curious what others would do.

Side note:  We finished with the ultrasound today and the doctor was talking to us.  He wondered if we wanted to know the gender and we said we already knew it was a boy.  Shocked, he said, "What?"  He pulled backed out the ultrasound equipment to recheck the baby's gender.  Sure enough, it's still a boy, but he sure had us confused there for a minute!

Boy to Girl Ratio

The Ratio is now 4:1

 

My first thoughts:

This is getting ridiculous.  

I was certain this was my little girl.

However, how could I be disappointed when I saw this little face?

I'm in love with boy #4 already!

 

We took the boys to the ultrasound with us today, it was fun to have them there when we learned that another baby boy would be joining our family.  Gabe said that mommy just didn't wish hard enough for a girl, he must have wished harder for a boy and that's why we are getting another baby brother.  

We will be going back in for at least two more ultrasounds to double check some stuff with the baby's heart and my placenta, very similar to what we had to do when I was pregnant with Porter.  There's no major concerns, just stuff we are keeping a close eye on.  So keep the little guy in your prayers and we'll keep you posted on how things go.  (You may want to keep me in your prayers too, since I'm not sure how I'm going to survive being in a house with four boys!)

How long does it take you to get to your car?

Living downtown it takes us a while.  I am so looking forward to being in a house with a driveway and a garage!  How does the saying go?  "You don't know what you've got until it's gone."  Never imagined it to be referring to parking spots, but now I'm sure of it!

Want to hear a gross story about the parking lot where we park our cars?  On one of the first nights we were here, John was hauling stuff from the cars into the apartment and he stepped in some dog poop in the parking lot.  It smelled super gross.  I don't know why, but he mentioned to me later that he could see corn in the poo.  You know what I said, "John, dogs don't eat corn.  You stepped in man poo."
I told you it was a gross story.  Ah, the memories of living in a metropolis!

So the moral of the blog post is: don't take good parking for granted (this includes poop free parking).

Uncle Sam

This post is picture heavy, so indulge me.  First a couple of miscellaneous things.

Cute pic of the kids and daddy loving the Wii.

Do you have a song you sing to your kids in the tub?  

Here's our bath song:

Rub a dub dub Mr. Gabe is in the tub.

Gotta get him clean

Gotta get him clean

He's splishin' and a splashin'

Movin' and a groovin'

Shakin' and a makin'

He's cookin' (kid fills in the blank, ie: bacon)

Ewww gross, (bacon) in the bathtub.

I know, I know, I should be a professional song writer, I'd probably make millions.  Don't know why I shared that now, but the picture of Gabe in the tub made me think about it.

The kids watching it snow!
We only got a skiff, but they were excited to see it coming down!









Now finally to the Uncle Sam stuff!
Did you know that Troy is the home of Uncle Sam?
Neither did we, but if you look at the blue sign, you'll know.
Did you know he was a real person?  Neither did we.

So here's the story.  

Sam Wilson of Troy, New York sold meat to the United States Army during the War of 1812.  The barrels of meat were stamped property of US, but the soldiers joked that it meant it came from Uncle Sam who had supplied the product.  The name stuck and anything marked US became Uncle Sam's. 

Here we are at the Uncle Sam Monument in Troy.

Next we went to Oakwood Cemetery.  I know it seems like we visit a lot of cemetery's.  We went to Oakwood because that is where Uncle Sam is buried.  We also wanted to hike to some of the waterfalls located within the cemetery.

Here's one of the churches in Oakwood.

 I found this sign a little confusing . . . 

This church is also the crematorium.  

Look close, you can see an oven through the center window.  Strange.

Porter puts his penny on Uncle Sam's Grave.

 There were a lot of other neat graves in the cemetery. 

I love the top of this one - it's for a ship's captain. 

There were also some amazing mausoleums.  

Even in broad daylight these things give me the hibbie jibbies!  

I don't mind looking at them, in fact, I think they are cool, but it takes all the guts I have to walk up to one and look inside!

  The kids ready to start hiking!

(Check out the amazing view of Troy behind them.)

 There are five waterfalls located in the cemetery.

We only found three.

 Another church  

 Sunset means it's time to go home.

We are not the Addam's family.  We don't stay in cemeteries after dark : )