Wow, Elias is FOUR already?  Happy birthday little dude.  I can’t believe it.  So, for his birthday we did a few fun things.  First off, to make sure he skied when he “was three” I took him to yawgoo to go skiing a few days before his birthday.  We had a BLAST.  One run on the rope tow and he was asking to go on the big lift already!  I tried the between my knees approach bit I couldn’t really see what he was doing “down there” with his helmet and my jacket and knees etc.  So we quickly switched to me holding a pole out beside me and him holding onto that.  That seemed to work much butter.  We took 2 rope tow runs and 4 lift runs before the obligatory stop in the lodge for a massive cookie!  We then made it out for another three lift runs and one more trip up the rope tow.  WE WILL BE BACK (well, not to yawgoo as they closed Sunday, but we’re going to Wachusett or Blue Hills at least once more this year, hopefully with Nikki and Bella as well so we can all have some fun (Bella in a backpack) and possibly get some pictures of Elias skiing on his own.

Beyond that it’s been a crazy couple of weeks here.  Our furnace blew up ~2 weeks ago now.  We were heating out house with our wood stove while getting quotes on the new furnace.  We went 10 days w/o the furnace, then when they were installing it the chimney guys pulled up LAME and said it was “too snowy” to go on a roof.  After I went out myself in my socks (bone dry, you could have raced nascar up there!) the guy running the show called them but they were busy ON ANOTHER JOB…  Well that meant we’d need the wood stove for our party.  Well, then in the middle of the night the glass door broke on that, so a 2am call to them I had a guy out to the house at 4am and the new furnace was working with the old chimney by 6am…  Not a fun night.  It all works now and we had an awesome party Sunday here at the house.  For anyone who made it, THANK YOU, it was awesome.  We also had a bunch of NSOP (my photography forum) people here so I’ll be linking in some of their shots as well.

Beyond that, we’ve also passed around a nasty cold through the house (Bella and Elias got me sick, Nikki finally has it now) and in the midst of that a stomach bug came through after the party with Elias and Nikki getting it, but so far I’ve missed it…  Not fun being sick!  Isabella is also getting VERY mobile.  Nikki and I have a bet as to if she’ll walk on her own before her birthday, I’m saying no, but it’s looking like I’ll be wrong.  She’s getting around with a walker type toy already, and REALLY getting into trouble, much more so than Elias did at his age.

Here’s a link to my good friend Ken Gilbert’s flickr set from the party.

Enjoy the pics!