We laughed at how our activities were a bit different this year on our trip to Peoria. We stopped and looked at trucks. We went to the pool twice. We went to the zoo.
The zoo had a new “Africa” exhibit that was beautiful, and we really enjoyed the visit.
What we were admiring.
Elijah did like the animals, but you can see what held his fascination most of all.
And we had a good laugh over this one from the zoo snack bar.
Elijah and Oma reading a book.
We think Poppi taught Elijah to walk. At the start of the trip, he was taking just about three steps then plopping… but Poppi held Elijah’s hands and walked him up and down hallways, living rooms, parking lots… by the end of the trip, Elijah was confident on his feet.
David and Elijah riding in the hammock.
Visiting with the Otten side of the family.
Visiting with good friends! Elijah was very impressed by Kyle and Adelyn. He wanted pizza like they ate, and pointed to the applesauce insistently.
He was especially impressed by Kyle and shrieked with delight after him. The boys had a blast pounding away on the piano.
a special moment with Oma
For a little boy passionate about trucks, Peoria is the perfect place to visit. There are big, green lawns to be mowed…
And the streets are lined with Caterpillar tractors…
especially the parking lot of the community college.
We stopped to see them all.
and touch them…
and ride in them…
and even sneak in and DRIVE them! (Well, at least pull on the levers…)
We got to go to Poppi’s workplace, meet his co-workers, and sit at his desk. Poppi and his co-workers get to play with little tractors on their desks. Elijah thought this was a dream job.
Especially when he found out that Poppi’s work had a mini-excavator he could drive. He interviewed for a position in 2031.
In fact, in Peoria, even the playgrounds are made of Caterpillar equipment. What a Promised Land for truck fans.
The big news this month: He’s walking! This has made our monthly frog picture a bit more of a challenge. Elijah loves being mobile. He chuckles to himself when he walks, and raises his arms high in the air.
A highlight of our recent trip to Illinois was seeing our dear friends Abram and Becca, and meeting their little girl Eliana for the much-anticipated first time. We loved watching Ellie and Eli relate to each other, both of them being happy, smiley kids. We were really thankful when both little ones cooperated by taking nice long naps so we could catch up. The lighting was so spectacular, and the little ones were so cute (yeah, two sets of proud parents…), that we couldn’t resist taking tons of pictures. And in honor of Abram, who is famous for the quantity of pictures he takes, we’ve included many photos in this post!
Abram and his little girl
Impromptu portrait of two pretty ladies
sharing tasty Cheerios
Isn’t she cute?!
Eliana: Do I really have to sit next to this character?
The picture we were hoping for…
Two little families
On Saturday I was able to take part in the New England profession of lobstering. Our neighbor, a lobsterman by profession, has mentioned that if I ever wanted to join him he would give me some lobsters in exchange for helping him on the boat.
I met Scott (our neighbor), down on the Manchester docks at 6am where he had already brought his boat up and had loaded the bait.
View from the boat of the Manchester harbor mouth at 6:15am
Scott’s lobster operation is a bit on the small side as he only has 180 and traps in the water. Many of these traps were located just outside of the mouth of the harbor near an island with a lighthouse on it.
Now the system of lobstering is fairly straight forward. A set of 10 lobster traps are strong together on a line at ~20 yard intervals. At each end of the line is a buoy that marks the beginning and end of the line and allows the lobsterman to know where he dropped his line at. In order to retrieve your traps you hook either buoy with a 4 ft pole with a large hook on it, string one end of the line over a pulley, and use a wench type device to help pull the line in. In the below figure you can see the line pulled over the pulley, passes around the wheel looking object, and than onto the floor of the boat. While you’re waiting for the next trap to come up one person pulls any lobsters out of the traps (and any other living thing such as crabs, starfish, …), and the other person empties the old bait sack and places a new one in its place. You than place the trap in such a way that it will easily slide into the water when you lay the line later on.
The traps are designed for the lobsters to crawl into the first section which is on the right in the above picture. All the openings have wide beginnings and small endings so once a lobster crawls in it is very difficult to crawl out. From the first section the lobster than crawls into the second section, and eventually ends up in the last section. On average we threw back more lobsters than we kept due to strict governmental designed to help prevent depleting the lobster population.
When I brought the lobster home Elijah wasn’t exactly sure what to make out of the lobster.
Elijah trying to figure out what a lobster is
We saved the lobster for the following day as we were having our small group from church over for a beach day and ended up having a lobster feast. It was extra special as two of our good friends are moving to DC in the next week and this would be there last New England lobster for a long time.
Several members of our small group eating the lobster.
Overall it was a great experience and one that I hope will be able to be repeated.
p.s. If you notice Jamie is not in any of these pictures as she refused to be associated with the lobster. She was gracious enough to allow us to enjoy them, but she enjoyed her P.B. & J. on the couch. :)
We had looked at the weather report in the morning and it said there was a high probability of rain in the afternoon. However, seeing as we live so close to the water we figured we would head down for a couple hours, especially seeing as it was blue sky over our head when we looked out the windows.
After enjoying the beach for a while we looked up and saw the the storm rolling in …
Needless to say we started heading home.
My friend and fellow teacher Kendra and I had babies a month apart. Chelsea and Elijah have been buddies since they met. 
Chelsea, the classic girl, is beautifully verbal. She knows many words, mimics others, waves, and even sings! She doesn’t walk, but she sure can communicate! Elijah, on the other hand, says maybe 7 words, three of which are “Truck,” “ball,” and “tractor.” But he’s walking! and climbing and jumping…
Kendra and I took the little ones to the beach. We dug a shallow hole and the two had a blast in their own little sandbox.
They stayed put, as if they knew it was their little space on the beach.
Chelsea played with her little bucket, daintily putting in sand, stirring it, splashing gently.
Elijah mainly banged his shovel, dumped his sand, and climbed in and out of the hole. We laughed at how they were the classic picture of “girls” and “boys.”
