Dairy Farm Visit and Eilee's New Playhouse

One of Dave's coworkers (Mary) owns a dairy farm, and we were lucky enough to be invited to visit last weekend. They have about 100 cows, and 2 calves that had just been born earlier that week. Eilee was very excited, as she knows her animals and animal sounds, and kept saying "Cows! Cows! Cows! Hi." But she wasn't as excited when she got up close, I think they might have been too big and scared her a little. We also got to see a few horses, lots of cats, and a dog. We hope to have a get together there next year, when the weather gets better, with all the 'PG' (PreventionGenetics) kids, so they can get to know one another.

Here is one of the calves that had just been born that week, he was so soft and fluffy!


Inside with the big, milking cows. I think Mary said a few of them weigh over a ton!
Outside with the "preschool" age cows, Eilee isn't quite sure what to make of them.


Eilee found a cat, something she is a little more familiar with.


Eilee got an early Christmas present this year from my parents: a playhouse! It is pretty cool and has a bunch of windows to peek through. Eilee has been enjoying it thoroughly. But my mom asked for pictures, and unfortunately these are the best you are going to get for now. Whenever I take out my camera, Eilee immediately wants to play with that instead of what she was already playing with. So in order to take her picture with the house, I had to put her in it and then shut the zipper so she couldn't get out. Hence the first picture, of her crying. Then she got smart and figured a way out without using the zipper, hence the second picture.

Halloween

I feel like a bad mom this year because we never made it to a pumpkin patch. Between the trip to Hawaii and the weather and the closest pumpkin patch being 4o minutes away, it just didn't happen. So no cute pictures of Eilee surrounded by pumpkins this year. But the city of Marshfield has recently renovated their Mainstreet, and every year the local businesses do their own Trick or Treat thing (this year it was the day before Halloween). Eilee got all dressed up in her chicken costume (yes, the same one as last year) and we headed downtown. Eilee did really well walking around on her own and holding her own pumpkin pail. I thought she would dump out the bucket and try to eat the candy right away, but she was totally into walking into the different stores and watching the other kids. Everyone commented on how cute she was (I can't blame them). It was only at the end that she had a stage 5 meltdown, and we had to leave. She has gotten very good at tantrums, as she goes for my face and tries to break my glasses. It took me 10 minutes to get her in the car seat. We only got 6 trick-or-treaters at our house, so next year we know not to get a lot of candy.

Here we are downtown, still in a good mood.


Why did the chicken cross the road?


Who wouldn't want to give this adorable chicken lots of candy?


Enjoying her spoils--she knew exactly what to do with that lollipop when she got her hands on it.

I finally painted her room before we left for Hawaii, it turned out great! Her piggybank collection looks great against the soft green.


Eilee has always enjoyed knocking down other peoples' block towers, but just this past weekend she has learned how to make her own! Her largest feat so far has been 4 blocks high, and very precariously built.

Hawaii

Dave and I are back from our trip to Hawaii. Dave had a conference (The 59th annual American Society for Human Genetics Meeting, in case you were wondering) there for work, and I was lucky enough to tag a long since we only had to pay for my airfare, and we didn't think we would get another opportunity to go to Hawaii for a long time. Eilee stayed in Wisconsin with Dave's mom and grandmother, and as much as we missed her we know she had a great time with his family. We were able to use Skype to video conference with her almost everyday, and although I don't think she understood at first, after a few days she was high-fiving the computer and would talk to us.

Our hotel, Aston at the Waikiki Banyon, was only 2 blocks from the beach, and had a full kitchen and a very partial view of the ocean. Food there is SOOO expensive (1 gallon of milk was $9!! and that's not even organic!), we bought some groceries and prepared a lot of our meals in the room so we could save money. Dave was busy with the conference most of the time, so I spent my time laying around at the beach or pool and reading. I finished 4 books that week! I did spend one morning hiking up Diamond Head Crater, and Friday night we were lucky enough to have Dave's Uncle Mike and his wife Gail take us out on their sail boat, where we were able to enjoy a wonderful sunset. As much fun as we had in Hawaii, we were glad to get back to Eilee. She was so excited to see us for all of 5 seconds, then went back to playing with her toys.

Here I am at the top of Diamond Head Crate. The inside of the crater is behind me.

View from Diamond Head, looking down on Waikiki Beach, and I think Honolulu beyond that.


This is the beach we spent most of the time at, I don't think you can see our hotel but it was pretty close.

There were these crazy big trees, I don't know what they were called, but they had all these vines hanging down and weird roots that you could walk around in.


Our last day there we had lunch at Duke's, where I had this fantastic drink called the Lava Flow, so fantastic that I also had a second.


Dave and I on the beach at sunset. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a sunrise because we were on the west side of the island.


On the boat, enjoying some wine and local Hawaiian food ( I can't remember what it was called).


Sunset from the boat.