Snow Days

The winter months have been full of snow here in Nashville. It's been crazy with no snow tires, a city full of inexperienced snow drivers, and hour long lines to get out of the parking garage when snow starts to fall again. We're so glad it's finally warming up (hope I didn't just jinx anything).

With our steep driveway we get to use different parking spaces when it starts snowing. We didn't get our car out in time one of the snow surprise days and Matt had to spent over 30 minutes shoveling and scraping ice of our drive way along with a bag of street salt from our neighbor. Then when we finally get our car out we get to slip down our icy street and try not to turn into another of the poor fools that have their cars stuck in ditches all around the neighborhood. So far so good.

Our back yard turned into a Winter Wonderland:

Lucas says "Turtle - hiding" (see the sandbox hump?)

Lucas enjoying window sticker time:

Trecking to work in the snow at 6 am is mild misery but on days home, I love the snow! The world outside is so peaceful... everything is so white and Lucas loves it! "Stomp, stomp!"

January Fun

We spent our first few days of the New Year in Birmingham. We also amazingly both got a holiday on for the first Monday that we were supposed to be back and extended our vacation by a day. That one extra day felt amazing! Then we went straight back to full time craziness. I had my Infectious Disease rotation in January -- really interesting but long days! Matt spent some time (in theory) doing different clinics -- really just cardiology, go figure. He's been getting to practice doing echos (echocardiography or ultrasounds of the heart for you non-medical people:) and has been loving it! Great sign for his future career choice. Here are a few random pictures from the month.

Lucas and Jenny in matching green monkey jammies.

Taking the new Trike for a spin

Checking out Daddy's headphones... or playing pilot?

Jenny & Luca on the playground. Who's heavier?

Lego Time

My beautiful sister on her way to her Sadie Hawkin's dance

The Whitley Takes Over

So, this weekend I followed my beloved Cats down to Nashville only to see them lose to the Dores. Thankfully, I was able to ignore this humiliating loss and spend some time with my favorite Baby Lucas. Oh, and I saw Matt and Steph, too.

This weekend has been spent reading dino books (Aunt Whitley brought him a new one and so it was only fair she read it to him 20 times in a row), eating, making tunnels out of legos, sleeping until 6 AM, putting dinos in our pockets, watching the "Elmo ABC" video, finding dinos in Costco and avoiding nap time. I have also discovered that Matt and Steph have been buying Lucas all the presents I ask them if I can get for him. If they steal anymore of my ideas, I have threatened to send Lucas his very own drum set.

I think the highlight of the weekend was this morning when I got to eat with all Israels (minus Dan. Sorry, Dan!) including Lucas, who insisted on sitting next to me, and the new baby Graham! Jealous?

Below are just a few of the exploits we got into this weekend. There are not more pictures because every time I got out my phone to take it, Lucas would insist on watching "Me-Me" or Elmo. As I am clearly a pushover, less pictures were taken.

This is the very large cupcake I bought Lucas at Bread & Co. The man in front of us in line let us go first. He thought Lucas was going to make himself sick because he was freaking out and yelling "CUPCAKE!!!!"

Where's Lucas?

There he is!!

Lucas tried to convince Matt to lift him up so he could play on the playground.

Lucas helps us shop for dangerous chemicals.

Pa-Pa and Lucas reading the Hippo book.

It was such a fun weekend!!! Thank you for all of the Israels who were so kind in putting up with me and buying me food and letting me play with their children. I can't wait for my next visit!!!

Zoolight Safari

Birmingham's Zoo has a yearly Christmas light tradition. At night the whole zoo is lit up beautifully. Lucas was just old enough to really enjoy it this year. He was fascinated by the all the lights especially the ones in the shapes of animals. He also loved the dancing and moving lights. What a sight to see his face light up! Made me see the wonder and beauty of the lights in a whole new way.

Waiting to get in

Three Silly Snowmen

A Dragon in the Lake

On the "Up-Down"

This was Lucas first time on a "big" animal on the Merry-Go-Round. He has wanted to theoretically ride the carousels at the mall and zoo for quite some time now but has gotten scared whenever it was actually time to get on. Jenny convinced him this time and he loved it! See the video:

Visiting the Llama

Jenny really is an animal friend. Kisses for the llama (see below).

Me and my favorite Sis

Christmas "Day"

We finally got our long anticipated holiday break on December 28th! We drove to Huntsville to spend some Christmas time with Matt's family. Luckily for us Mike and Beverly came the same time we did and Dan and Matt's parents were willing to wait for us with celebrating Christmas so we were able to have a Christmas Day a few days late.

Here are some pics from our second Christmas:

The cousins playing

Unwrapping

Graham had fun with the wrapping paper and bows

Lucas' favorite present: the Dinosaur Train (train + dinosaurs = two favorite things combined; what could be better?). Thank you Uncle Mike and Aunt Bev!

Approved for all ages

Lucas insisted on wearing his new jacket around the house.

New ski goggles!

Dan got a lounger... what a perfect present.

Christmas Eve

I am still way behind on my blogging. I'm going to have to catch up so I can actually write about present day things like all the snow we're still getting in Nashville. My brother-in-law emailed that in Arkansas they're calling it Snow-Plosion 2011 (they called the last snow storm a few weeks ago Snow-Mageddon). I almost didn't make it in to work last night (I finally did thanks to my sweet husband shoveling the driveway for half an hour and then driving me in). It was a traffic mess! One of my co-workers took 3 hours to make it to her house one mile away and it was taking people >1 hour to get out of our parking garage. Oof. I guess that day it was good I was working nights and wasn't making the rush hour trip home. Nashville drivers do not know how to handle snow!

Now to the actual post. My family came up to Nashville to celebrate Christmas Eve with us (as they have been sweet enough to do every year since we started residency). Matt and I both had to work Christmas this year but were both home on the afternoon/eve of Christmas Eve giving us just enough time to have a little Christmas celebration.

Here are some pics:

Decorating the tree. Lucas did surprisingly good with the tree in part probably because he didn't know that I had chocolate ornaments (non-breakable) on the bottom part of the tree this year.

Hanging out before the celebration.

Puzzles with Aunt Jenny

Cuddles for Oma & Opa

Being silly with Aunt Jenny

The necessary in-front of the tree family picture.

And another...

Somehow he got "Lulu" (his paci) out of bed. Sneaky kid.

Christmas Eve music

Helping dad put together the new tricycle after unwrapping presents

It takes lots of help!

Finally done!

Christmas morning, Matt and I headed in to take call and Lucas headed out with my parents.

A snowy Christmas day!

Our Christmas meal at the hospital. Not bad for an on-call potluck.