Well wile the Eastern side of the state is disappearing under flood water the weather here is feeling great.  Beth reminded me this last weekend that there was exactly five weeks until graduation.  You don't think she is counting do you.  The nice weather has allowed us to get out an play a lot.  Last weekend we made a trip down to Bismarck to retrieve our much needed vacuum cleaner out of storage.  Using this as an excuse we booked a room at the motel allowing Andy to fit two swim sessions into the time between his visits to the science center and the zoo.  He loved it all, especially the water time and animals at the zoo. The pool was nice and warm and the cooler weather and lack of visitors seemed to make all the animals extra active and excited to see us.  To Beth's horror one of the cats even seemed to want to play with Andy and kept pawing the glass inches from him while one of the Alaskan grizzlies seemed possessed and ran up and down the fence line next to us.  Andy loved it all.  All the playground time also seems to be reminding Andy he still isn't walking much and he has taken up a renewed interest in walking around the apartment.  Enjoy the pictures and see you soon back west. 

Well we have been having a great fall here.  Until last weekend when winter hit us with a snowy 65mph blast we havdn't seen a drop of rain and the abnormally high temperatures and continuous sunshine made playing outside easy.  Andy and I have continued to spend two to four hours a day outside walking, running, and watching wildlife around our favorite park.  We have been using Andy's stroller as a grocery getter.  Beth even managed to get a couple good mountain bike rides in with us during her last week of surgery.  However the Saturday before last she dove into following hospitalists on her internal medicine rotation and the biking has been cut short by her long call hours and the snow on the ground.  On the plus side since we live a skyway away from the hospital she has been able to come spend time with us between admits.  Andy  even took a little time out of his busy day to send a little message to one of his great grandfathers who we all hope feels much better soon.  This last weekend we took a little trip south to Bismarck for Beth's ski patrol refresher.  This gave Andy the opportunity to spend his first night in his new tent at the hotel.  It worked very well and I highly recommend them.  Then while Beth was refreshing we summited the snowy "peak" above Huff Hills Ski Area for some nice views.  Andy loves to explore.  It's been a big couple weeks for him.  He seems to have taken being 5% by weight very seriously and suddenly doubled his milk intake the beginning of last week.  In addition he has now mastered front to back rolling, and is getting much more comfortable on his stomach with his head up as well as seems to be slowly warming up to spoon feeding.  He really likes the high chair, that we finally had a chance to pull out of the storage in Bismarck last weekend.  That's a funny story in itself, but by the time we were done we had managed to rescue the snow tires for both cars from the bowels of the pile, change them out in the mud, dug our way into the keys for the fire safe we have been carrying around with no way to open, as well as retrieve ski gear.  So now we have passports (in safe) and equipment for our x-mas ski trip.