Snowtubing

My best friend Emily came up to visit for the weekend. Unfortunately all of our weekend plans didn't quite live up to the high expectations I had. She got here on Friday night and we had a nice time talking. Braden was away at a swim meet, getting home at about 3 in the morning. Yuck! Braden woke up around 6am I think with Phase 2 of the stomach bug. I didn't blog about it, but Ethan got Phase 2 on Thursday (yes, threw up ALL over me AGAIN!). This darn stomach bug has decided to build a habitat in our home and live in each of us time and time again. It's super fun.

Anyway, leaving Braden quarantined to the bedroom, the rest of us took Blythe to gymnastics. I tried to remember the camera this time, but alas, forgot again. She did her standard rotation around the room, but spent most of her time on the tumble track as usual. It's a long narrow trampoline that I guess gymnasts actually do tumbling on, but Blythe just runs on it (most of the time) or very rarely actually does hops on it with her arms in the air.

We got back home and while Ethan napped for a bit, we got all of our stuff ready to go snowtubing! We were SO excited to go since we initially wanted to go at Christmas time, but snowtubing wasn't open yet, then were going to go a few weeks ago but had too many sicknesses and it was too cold. So FINALLY we were going and the weather was PERFECT. I knew Blythe would be confined to the kiddie snow tube park, which I had heard wasn't much to write home about, but Emily and I would take turns pulling Blythe around in the kiddie part while the other went down the big snowtube lane. We had also secured day care there for Ethan. So unfortunately Braden couldn't go since he was still puking, and it was better not to leave Ethan with him anyway, so we took him with us.

The drive was pretty easy. Just over an hour away, so not bad at all. We parked and then had to get on all our gear and then trek a ways up a big hill to the "mountainhouse". Once we got there, we right away got some lunch. 25 dollars later, I thought "lesson learned - eat before we get here next time". So anyway, we finally get out to go get our snowtubing tickets and see this giant crowd waiting in line to snowtube.

We over heard a group talking about how they were told that they would only get to go down 1 or 2 times (in a 4 hour block of time). Tickets are $30 each. I heard it was a lot of fun, but one of wait in line for 1.5 hours while the other pulls Blythe around? Not sounding like a good idea or a good way to spend $60.

The kiddie snowtube park is only $5, so we decided to go ahead and buy Blythe a ticket for that while we figured things out. I also still had Ethan with me because we found out the child care is clear on the other side of the resort. But seeing as how I forgot Ethan's jacket, I couldn't keep him out there with us, so I shuttled it over to the other resort part to check him in to day care. Upon my return, I found Emily and Blythe had made a snowman:

After that we pulled her up and down the kiddie snowtube area, which is incredibly small and was way overcrowded due to the regular snowtubing being so busy. It ended up being actually quite dangerous as you send your kid flying down only to knock down anything and anyone in their path. Here's a short video clip:

After what seemed like an eternity of doing that over and over again (which was really only about 50 minutes), we were ready to stop and take a breather. Would have been nice to sit at a table outside in the sun and watch the skiers, except all the tables were full. Trend of the day. So we shuttled over to pick up Ethan. Though I had paid for 3 hours of day care, he was only there an hour and a half. But we were cutting our losses and going home. Lessons learned: there are hundreds of church groups that come on weekends and they like to snowtube, therefore, don't snowtube on a weekend (skiing would be fine though).

Here's one more pic of Blythe and I on the snowtube. She made me go with her a couple of times and I feared for the lives of the small children we nearly killed.

All that lack of snowtubing made us tired, so we went to bed early last night! I forgot that I had volunteered our family to greet at church this morning, so unfortunately for Emily she had to come with us and wear jeans, which made her a little self-conscious, even though anything goes at our church and people wear jeans all the time. Sorry about that, Emily.

After church, Emily and I went to the VT/NC State basketball game to cheer on the Wolfpack. I cheer for the Hokies unless they are playing NC State. Seemed like a lock after NC State was up by 18 points in the second half, but anyone who cheers for NC State knows not to take a big lead for granted. It ended up going into overtime and then the Wolfpack lost. So disappointing. Damn disappointing Wolfpack.

During the game I checked my email on my Blackberry and saw some emails from some neighborhood residents. Apparently the fraternity house near our neighborhood had had a party the night before and we had some issues with people parking in the neighborhood and walking through the streets being loud. I think some neighbors approached the "street walkers" about it and to retaliate, the frat people came back with eggs and egged peoples cars. Sure enough, they had egged Emily's car. We've never really had a problem with that frat house before, so to say the neighborhood was ticked off would be a huge understatement.

So that's how Emily's visit ended (though Braden had actually washed it off her car before we got back from the game). No snowtubing, an unexpected church visit, a deflating loss by the Wolfpack, and an egged car. But I still think we managed to have a pretty good time.

Oh, and I almost forgot that Emily brought up Blythe's birthday present from she and my other best friend Sue. A Big Wheel! Blythe loved it! She's got some room to grow into it yet, as her feet don't quite push the pedals hard enough. By this summer I'm sure she'll be riding it all over the place.