Adventures in NC

Greetings from the mountains of NC! We've arrived safe and sounds, and although the internet is a bit scarce in the woods outside of Black Mountain, we've managed to scrape up a photo journal of some of our adventures so far. The photos are smaller than usual since the internet is patchier than usual. Update: There's a video at the bottom. We highly recommend it.

Traveling means packing, and packing means laundry, and laundry means cute photo ops in the laundry basket.
Eli got worn out from all the packing. This is becoming a pretty standard Eli pose...asleep in the front pack.
This is us at the Denver airport, moments before our flight boarded. Our plan worked pretty well...about 25 minutes before boarding, Jessa fed Eli and Eric walked him to sleep. He ended up sleeping for about 2 hours of the 2 1/2 hour flight. He would have slept the whole thing, but this psycho kid a few rows back was screaming, and woke him up. Eli was concerned enough to wake up, but quickly became distracted by eating. We endured the flight without much incident.
Eli and dad in the window seat. You can see how happy we were with his sleepiness.
Upon arrival in Nashville, we drove to Cookeville TN to meet some friends at Chili's. Turns out Jessa had planned a surprise 30th birthday celebration for Eric with a lot of our TN friends. Here's a fun game: there are five Reverends in that crowd; can you pick them out?
This is a HUGE series of photos we took of Eli on the bed at his Grandma's house. We took probably 45 shots; here are a few of the best ones. Thank goodness for digital cameras. He's pushing up when he's on his tummy, and has learned to roll from tummy to back. He doesn't mean to, and it freaks him out, but he can do it.
Everybody is telling us that Eli has the best expressions, and we agree.The beginnings of a smile.
Looking out the window to the mountains.
Full-fledged smile.Another big smile. He gets so excited when he smiles now...his whole body gets into it.
Another Eli-asleep-in-the-front-pack shot. This is his new Asheville hat; it's 45% soy and 55% organic cotton. What more can you say?
This afternoon, Eli got to meet Abram and Katie (see http://www.followfletchers.blogspot.com for more shots of them). Abram's 2nd birthday party was today, and Katie took her first steps yesterday, so big things are afoot at the Fletcher residence. Eli slept through most of the meeting (as did Abram and Katie), but it was good for all the grown-ups to have their kids meet each other.

We're off to many more adventures in North Carolina over the next few weeks. More updates to come as we have internet access! In the meantime, enjoy this video of Eli smiling!