Yellowstone…the Wildlife!

My favorite part of our trip to Yellowstone, by far, was the abundant wildlife we got to see.

First rule of Yellowstone in regards to wildlife. They are in charge. Not you. No animal makes this more clear inside the park than the bison. The bison does as he or she pleases. If it pleases a herd to walk down the middle of the street, well then who’s going to stop them?!

Ahh…teaching the next generation to rule the streets just as the adults do today.

 

There are so many bison in Yellowstone that we became completely disenchanted with them. Sad, but true. I have like 50 pictures of the first few herds of bison we saw and after that they had to do something really fun like hold a line of cars hostage for me to find them picture worthy. No wonder they take over roads….what’s a bison got to do to get his picture taken around here?!

Then there are these giant creatures- the elk. In this first picture you’re going to swear I’m making him up and have somehow digitally inserted him into the picture. You see, that’s why I had to find more elk just like him to take pictures of. I don’t want you to think I’m that talented with photoshop. I leave that to the rest of the Eckert clan.

I knew there had to be a girl elk around the park somewhere…and I found her!

While we’re talking BIG animals, lets talk about the bears. Toward the end of our trip we feared that we might make it out of the park without having seen a bear…and then we found both a black bear cub and three grizzly bears! It was pouring rain when we saw the black bear cub and he/she was on the move, so my picture is for proof of sighting purposes only…

Yeah, yeah, I know…it could be a black lab. But trust me, it’s not! The grizzly bears were more cooperative for picture taking…but they were REALLY far away. I mean, ultimately, that’s a very good thing. However, it posed a problem for our small cameras. There were people with telephoto lenses the size of ME out there so they could take great pictures of these bears.

As we close out our really big animal category, you may be wondering….what about moose?! Aren’t there supposed to be moose in Yellowstone? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Apparently, the moose population has declined inside the park in recent years and is down to about 200 total. This may not sound like a small population, but when you consider the size of Yellowstone (2221766 acres) it becomes a little clearer about why they may have been more difficult to find. I settled for this close encounter with a moose.

As a side note, when I put on that brown shirt that morning, Andrew said, “You know honey, you don’t look so pregnant in that shirt.” We agreed after looking at this picture together that he might have been wrong about that…

Then there’s the smaller creatures. First, the antelope. I mean, really. How cool is that?! An antelope.

And finally the smallest of creatures. I think they deserve a little fanfare. After all, can you imagine how hard it is to get some attention when there are elk and bears and bison and moose all around?! I love otters. When I go to a zoo, they are my favorite animals to watch. They just look like its fun to be them. I was determined to find an otter in Yellowstone…so determined, in fact, that I deemed all members of the family within the CIA mobile to be members of the elite OSU squad. That’d be Otter Spotting Unit, if you didn’t know…right. I know. You’re so glad you weren’t the one trapped in the car with me.

         

This weekend I’m in a friend/co-worker’s wedding followed by us heading off to the beach for the week. So here’s hoping that you have a wonderful week!

Pregnancy Update…Again :-)

As you may recall, this becomes a high risk pregnancy now that I’m in my third trimester, so we’ve been waiting to see what the plan was going to be. Since Miss Kennedy was stubborn at 20 weeks, we had to schedule another ultrasound to check out her spine in addition to beginning the ultrasounds that will be a part of the monitoring process from here on out. Yesterday was that ultrasound and so we have new pictures of our precious girl to show off.

First, here’s here cute little profile pictures.

I love seeing her little foot and little toes!

Okay and truthfully I considered leaving this next shot off of the blog because I think it’s kinda scary looking. However, if you could have been witness to the royal fit that she was throwing about having this ultrasound done (i.e. flipping, turning, kicking, throwing her arms around, etc…) you would know how appropriate it is that we have a picture of her face, staring right at you and mouth wide open as if she’s screaming. Some would say that she may take after her mother in her desire to be left alone….I say that clearly this is a gene that was passed down from her Grandfather….

  So the plan from here on out is that we will have an ultrasound every three weeks. (Kennedy is not going to be happy about this…) In addition, we will have a non-stress test done every week. Clearly, I will be spending a lot of time in the doctor’s office from here on out. This is all to keep an eye on her growth and the placental function.

At this time she’s measuring big for her gestational age…she already weighs 3 pounds (most of my books say between 2 and 2 1/2 right now…) and the ultrasound tech said that our due date should be more like September 26 based on how she’s measuring. Dr. Weltman said, “No, we know exactly when your due date is based on the IUI…she’s just big! Hm…that may not be what you want to hear…” Too funny.

Yellowstone: Part One

We flew out of DC on Tuesday morning to head off to Yellowstone. A great big THANK YOU goes out to Melissa, TJ and Leo for taking us to the airport. I should pause a moment to let that image sink in to anyone’s head who was not there to witness the ride to the airport….Melissa, TJ, Ace, Myself and Leo….plus luggage for Ace and I for the week….and Melissa and TJ had some things because they’d spent the night at our house the night before….in Melissa’s little car headed to DC in the HOV lane. Yes, people did point and laugh.

We flew through Denver where I got to visit my first ever USO. At the USO Andrew challenged me to a game of foosball. I won’t say who won. I will say a victory dance was danced. I’ll let you decide who is more likely to do a victory dance in the middle of the USO.

The flight from DC to Denver was very enjoyable. The flight from Denver to Billings, MT was the exact opposite. Neither Kennedy nor I were impressed with the amount of turbulence we encountered. We were especially unimpressed with the heart-stopping drops the plane seemed determined to do. That being said, we arrived safe and sound and my parents were waiting for us. They’d traveled out west a few days prior to visit friends and were kind enough to pick us up at the airport.

We loaded all of our things into our black GMC rental Yukon with black interior (Yes, I did feel like I was a member of the CIA traveling in this vehicle.) and headed off for the park.

It became clear very early on that our car was to be divided into two distinct sections. There was the left side of the car, inhabited by my Dad and I that was the observation team.

Dad did the driving and looking. I did the propping up my feet and animal spotting.

Then what in the world was the other side of the car doing? They were the hard core research team. There were more books and maps between my Mom and Andrew than could comfortably be spread out on their laps. And I just DARE you to ask them a question. They’d both head into the stack of books so fast to find the answer that papers would fly. Papercuts were, in fact, a serious job hazard for the right side of the car.

Shortly after leaving the airport, we were able to get onto a very scenic drive called the Beartooth Highway. This was where our real adventure began. We were driving along side the edge of cliffs, gaining altitude like crazy and there were not always guardrails standing between our CIA mobile and the edge. I must admit that the pictures are a little lacking from this particular part of our trip, as the resident picture taker was feeling quite nauseous during the drive. I did manage to get a few gorgeous shots of what we were seeing. And yes, that is snow.

And I got this cute picture of my parents too:

Clearly you can see from Mom’s hair that the wind was blowing quite nicely up on top of the mountains where we were driving. Interestingly enough, Dad seems to be having no trouble keeping his hair out of his face. :-)

From the Beartooth Highway we entered Yellowstone National Park and my dreams about seeing wildlife immediately started coming true! We saw so much wildlife while we were in the park that I’m devoting Part Two of the Yellowstone trip entirely to the animals we spotted along the way. But I must make it clear from the very beginning that bison are EVERYWHERE inside the park. EVERYWHERE. I didn’t truly understand that yet, so when we spotted our first one I went NUTS taking pictures of him/her…how do you tell from a safe distance? Clearly I should have asked the research team….

We stayed for our first few nights in the park at Old Faithful Snow Lodge.

It was wonderful and (as if the name didn’t give it away) within a very short walk of Old Faithful. We got to see it go off a couple of different times.

What I don’t think I could truly grasp until I saw it myself was just how many geysers there are in the area. Everywhere you see steam in this picture is some source of water escaping the ground, at varying degrees of temperature and stench. Yes, I said stench and I meant it. The smell of sulfur is quite prominent at some of these places…

We spent a great deal of time exploring and hiking to see all of the different geysers and hot springs in the area. Here are just a couple of highlights:

There was the little geyser that just barely sputters water from the ground…and Andrew’s best impression of the sputterer.

There was Morning Glory Pool.

And Grotto Geyser (which looks way cooler in person than this picture is illustrating…)

Occasionally, along our hikes we had to stop and take a rest or I would get this look…

It says, “Really? You want to keep going? Have you seen the altitude? Have you seen how big this baby is getting?”

So everyone would be kind and sit and take in the scenery for a few minutes.

Then we’d all jump back up (okay, Andrew would jump, the rest of us got up…) and head down another path to see more spectacular sights. Oh the glorious waterfalls….

A story on the last waterfall picture here….notice that Andrew is in workout gear in this picture. Our research team looked up the trail down to this lookout spot in our guidebooks. It said that the trail was “strenuous” and required walking down 328 stairs to this spot which on the way back up was more likely to feel like 2,000. So I asked Andrew if he’d like to take the camera and get his workout in for the day. He got bonus points for bringing back a picture of him with the waterfall. Yours truly and her parents wandered around at the top of the mountain. For the record, the book said that it would take the average person about an hour to hike down to the falls and back up again…Andrew was back in about 25 minutes. More bonus points.

And just to wrap up this part one post (I know…can you believe you’ve read all this and I still plan to post more about our trip?!) A few cute pictures of the Yellowstone gang.

Clearly this is an excellent picture of Andrew and Kennedy. I’m hiding under that cute pink hat my mom bought at the rodeo in Cody, WY before we arrived.

One of my favorite things about my Dad on vacation: To take a picture, he always turns his hat around backwards so he can see. I just think it’s too cute.

Clearly, Mom thinks he’s cute too.

Documentation of our longstanding tradition of taking our own picture:

All four (five) of us at Yellowstone Lake:

And finally, a no boys allowed picture.

We spent our last few nights in the park staying at Canyon Lodge in a cute little cabin. Just outside the cabin you could see that bison frequently stopped by to visit…but alas they only got as close as down the street from us while we were staying there. Come to think of it, maybe that’s for the best…

And now I’ll leave you thinking about all that wonderful wildlife that’s to come in the next post….

First things first…a Pregnancy Update!

Wow, its been way too long since I blogged. I apologize for that! It’s been crazy around here with the end of school, packing up my classroom, trips to Raleigh, and a big ol’ vacation. I promise to do better in days and weeks to come. So, of course I have pictures of LOTS of things from our vacation and tons to talk about but I hear there are friends and family members who are getting restless for pictures of the growing baby girl, so we’ll start there :-)

This was taken in Wisconsin, Memorial Day weekend, so I was 21 weeks pregnant at the time.

Prepare for things to look a little different in pictures to come….

At the end of the school year, my fabulous team mates threw a shower for myself and one of our teammates Lauren. It was a combined baby and bridal shower and was quite fun. Andrew and I had just decided on a name for our sweet baby girl and we got our first monogrammed onesie! Here I am at 24 weeks pregnant with some of Kennedy Grace Eckert’s first clothing!

DISCLAIMER: It is important to remember that these pictures are entirely for you to stare at Kennedy. NOT at the pregnant lady who may or may not be impressed by these pictures of herself.

I’m still 24 weeks pregnant but it amazes me how much bigger Kennedy looks in this picture than in those ones above…I guess she ate her Wheaties this day….

Please remember that my earlier disclaimer is still in full effect as you view the next picture. As I mentioned, we recently returned from our trip to Yellowstone. This is the only picture I have that is only of Kennedy and I from the trip and I’m saving all the cute ones of me with other people for the next post (do you feel the suspense building?), so this is what we’re left with….Here I am at 27 weeks pregnant! (Note to self: do not let anyone take a picture of you after you’ve been walking for a number of hours while pregnant and wearing a bookbag. It somehow seems to make you the size of a bison. In future posts, you will know why my brain jumped to bison…MORE SUSPENSE!)

In other Kennedy Grace news, her room is coming together slowly but surely and I am THRILLED with her bedding. It is super cute but meets Andrew’s approval as well…”It’s girly, but not so girly I need a gun just to walk in here.”

And I had my very first parenting test…Ben was kind enough to purchase Kennedy a swing. A swing (in case you didn’t know) comes in a very large box looking like this:

And as your test of parenting, you are supposed to use these parts and directions to create something that you are going to trust to hold your newborn baby in and swing them back and forth. Right. Needless to say, I read each step like four times before completing it. But just look what I did!

Now I must admit. I’ve had a bunch of stuff sitting in the swing since I put it together because I figure if it’s going to collapse or otherwise malfunction I’d rather it do it sooner not later…so far though, I’m giving myself an A for a job well done.

Kennedy is moving like crazy these days and loves listening to loud music in the car with her Mom. She especially likes it when her Mom sings along. Her movin’ and groovin’ reaction tends to make her Mom so happy that somehow the road gets a little blurry and her Mom’s eyes start to leak.

We have another Level 2 ultrasound on Monday to try to catch a peek at Kennedy’s spine due to the fact that she was stubborn before and wouldn’t turn over for the ultrasound tech’s to be able to see it fully. As I enter my third trimester on Friday (whoa.) our doctor will begin monitoring for any sign that the Papp-A protein is causing trouble.

Though pregnancy continues to cause me to be exhausted and occasionally quite yucky feeling, I am loving every minute of being pregnant with our little girl. Just the other day Andrew and I were having a conversation about how we can’t wait to meet her and see what she looks like and hold her. Wow. We are so lucky.