Stanley visits the Oregon Zoo and sees our baby elephant

Things got quite exciting at the Oregon Zoo this summer when a new baby elephant was born. Here is a press release from the zoo on August 23rd.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Rose-Tu, a 14-year-old Asian elephant and first-time mother, gave birth to a 286-pound, male calf at the Oregon Zoo at 3:56 p.m. on Aug 23. The first-time mother seemed confused during the birth and showed aggression to the calf. Veterinarians and keeper staff quickly intervened, but reintroduction efforts are now underway.

"The baby is calling to his mom and she's calling back," said Mike Keele, the zoo's deputy director and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' species survival plan coordinator for Asian elephants. "Our veterinarians have examined the calf to see if he sustained any injuries, however from the behavioral signs we've seen thus far, we're very hopeful."

Keele believes that because Rose-Tu had never seen a birth before, she became confused when the baby was born.

"After several failed but energetic attempts, the calf finally stood up and took his first few steps," said Keele. "He has a good suckle response and took water from a keeper's finger within the first hour after birth," he added.

The Oregon Zoo has a renowned breeding program for endangered Asian elephants. More than 25 elephants have been born at the zoo, beginning with Packy in 1962.

An endangered species, Asian elephants are represented by an estimated 38,000 to 51,000 individuals living in fragmented populations in the wild. Agriculture, deforestation and conflict with humans pose a constant threat to wild Asian elephants.

Since the baby elephant was born, he has gained over 500 pounds!!!! The baby elephant's name is Samudra, which is the Hindi for "Lord of the Ocean" because he really loves to take baths. He is quite a little cutie and he is learning how to use his trunk. Right now his trunk is very weak and he doesn't have much control over it. It's kind of like how you learned how to actually USE your arms and legs instead of just letting them flap around!

You can see how much smaller he is then his mother still, even though he's grown quite a lot.

Here is a fun video of Samudra playing with his blue ball.




After the elephants we went on to visit the Lorikeets. The Lorikeets are so beautiful and colorful. I just love them. Stanley thought it was very exciting how they landed right on Shannon's arm to sip nectar. He got a "bird's eye view" of them for sure!


The fruit bats were quite happy because they had fresh fruit to eat. They are not the most attractive creatures in the zoo, but they were busy!


Here Stanley got to meet a zookeeper and and a Western Screech Owl. The zookeeper is the one in red (ha!). Western screech owls are native to the western part of North America, so you probably don't have them in Ohio. Their wings stretch out to about 1 1/2 times their height! You can see his yellow eye - do you know what that means? It means he can hunt in the daytime or the nighttime. I thought that was interesting because it reminded me of my cat. He can see pretty well in the dark, but he can also see in the daytime, and his eyes are bright yellow like the owl. I wonder if that's a coincidence or an adaptation of both animals??



Just for fun Stanley rode the John Deere tractor that's at the zoo!



Here we all watched sea lions glide gracefully through the water. This exhibit is pretty net because you can go outside and see them from the top and then come in and see them underneath. I like the underneath better, and Stanley did, too. Last week at the beach Jeff and I saw a sea lion swimming in the ocean right near the shore.


Stanley liked this mountain goat statue that was near the zoo exit, so he climbed right on up with the baby mountain goat and went for a little ride. It snowed again in Portland today - you know Stanley still has no coat after all this time and he was getting pretty chilly - so we finally had to leave. All in all he thought the Oregon Zoo was a pretty special place. If you'd like to lean more, you can use this link.

Hope you have a great week at school. WORK hard and learn lots!

Stanley visits Max's class and goes to Silver Falls!

Remember I told you Stanley was going to meet Max's class? Well, he did that last week. It was quite exciting for everyone. Max's class looked at Stanley's blog and thought he got to do quite a few fun things. I'd have to agree. Here's a picture of Max at the entrance to the school.

Here he is with Max in the school's garden and near the bulletin board where he read all about their cool garden space. They do composting there, and they have birdhouses and other great stuff.




Then Elizabeth and Max took Stanley to Silver Falls State Park to go for a hike. Silver Falls is Oregon's largest State Park. It's really beautiful there. They have lots of hiking trails that go past many waterfalls and even behind some of them. Some of the paths are very steep, and Stanley was a little nervous, but everyone was careful and everyone stayed safe.

Stanley wanted to get a close up view of the top of this waterfall, so Uncle Bob helped him get a good look.


If you'd like to watch a short video about Silver Falls to see more of the beautiful falls, here's one for you to take a look at:


Hope you have a great week at school. WORK hard and learn lots!

Stanley had a very busy weekend this weekend. The most exciting thing was meeting new friends Kellie and Dave who are from Bathhurst, Australia. They're visiting the USA for three weeks, and they were staying with Erin and Jeff this weekend, so we got to pal around all weekend. They are super fun people. The weather wasn't too nice Saturday, but we went down to the Willamette River that runs through Portland and walked down the path that goes along one side, across the bridges, and back up the other side. There's a super fun sign that says Made In Oregon that's right downtown, and Stanley had his photo taken in front of that.

Then we stopped at the the Skidmore Fountain, the oldest piece of public art in Portland. It was built in 1888 and was erected on the site that was Portland's center at that time. The upper part of the fountain was for people, and the bottom troughs were for dogs and people. Sometimes our policemen who ride horses downtown Portland let their horses drink out of the fountain still! Unfortunately, I can't get this photo to load up, so I'l have to try and repost later!

Stanley was also excited to try drinking from one of Portland's bubbler fountains, which run all the time, no pushing the button needed! Yummy water :)

Then today we went to the Oregon Coast to see the Pacific Ocean. We stopped at the Jewell Wildlife Refuge on the way where a herd of Roosevelt Elk spends their winters. They were really beautiful. Luckily, it wasn't raining when we got there. 

Next, it was on to Cannon Beach where we took a walk over to Haystack Rock, which is the third largest seaside monolith (that just means free-standing rock) in the whole WORLD. It's 235 feet tall, and it looks quite a lot like a haystack, don't you think? The weather at the beach was cold, rainy, and windy, but we still had a hand at trying to throw the boomerang our new friends brought us from Australia. It said right on the package that it was guaranteed to come back to you...apparently we weren't quite throwing it correctly. Still, it was really fun to try!

This week, Stanley is off for yet another fun adventure this week when he gets to meet Cousin Max's class at Mary Woodward Elementary School. They're starting their Flat Stanley unit this week! It's going to be a lot of fun for them to see where their Stanleys go, too!

Hope you have a great week at school. WORK hard and learn lots!

Happy New Year!

Stanley wants to be one of the first to wish all of you a Happy New Year. He spent New Year's Eve with great friends eating way too much

and playing lots of fun games, like Super High Impact football,
Partini (it's sort of like Cranium, with charades and humming and making things out of clay),

and the ultimate game ever, Rock Band which Erin got for her birthday.
He loves the guitar!


Here's to a great 2009 for everyone!

More fun in the snow!

Wow - this is surely a record for Portland, Oregon. It has actually snowed for 8 days in a row! By now we have about 9 inches on the ground, and it has drifted up to 14" in some places. Stanley went out in the snow today, but since he still has no coat, he didn't stay out long. You can see he nearly got buried in a drift, but Stanley smiled through it all. That kid has quite the positive outlook on life!

He also really enjoyed Christmas caroling around the neighborhood tonight. We have a tradition at our house to go around the neighborhood each year and sing to the neighbors with a group of friends. Our group was small this year, but our singing was quite excellent! Hope you're enjoying a break from school. Stanley likes having time off. He's hoping to get a little something under the tree on the 25th, and he's been a pretty good boy, so maybe we can arrange that!

Happy holidays!

Holy cow, it's snowing in Portland!!!

This has been a really great day because it's been snowing all day and that hardly ever happens in Portland. Portland's got a very mild climate, and we might have snow one or two days each winter. Whenever it snows, everything stops because we don't have many snow plows here and we have a LOT of big hills, so no one can go anywhere. I never want to go anywhere except my neighborhood when it's snowing anyway, because I just want to walk around and look at how pretty everything is! Of course I have to take a lot of pictures of everything, too. Stanley went out with us this morning, and I feel kind of bad because he didn't even have a hat or gloves or anything on, but he seemed to do just fine. Here are some pictures from our walk.


These are our friends Sylvie and Ruben. They were out sledding today and had a great time in the snow!
This is Jeff and Stanley in front of our house. I thought you might like to see what our house looks like...normally there's no snow in the yard :)

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but that white dot in front of Stanley's head is a perfect, single snowflake. It was quite incredible! If you want to see some amazing snowflake photos, go to THIS site. The photos on this site were done by Wilson Bentley who was the first person to photograph a snowflake. And it's hard to believe, but he did it in 1885!!! There is a fun snowflake matching game on that site, too. If you want to make virtual paper snowflakes (on the computer, not with real paper), try THIS site. My students love to play on this site. You can make some really incredible designs!

Here Stanley was enjoying a beautiful holly tree! Luckily, it wasn't too pokey.
Here is Stanley making a snow angel in the snow just before we went inside to have hot chocolate with whipped cream. Mmmmmm. Nothing better than a snow day!

And we just got the BEST news and that is that there's not going to be any school tomorrow! Hooray - another day to play in the snow!!!

Have a good week at school. WORK hard and learn lots!

Birthdays, bowling and bunco

Stanley had a great week last week. It took him a little while to recover from that exciting trip to DC, so he didn't do much for a week or so, but believe me, he has been making up for lost time since then!!!

Last week I (Auntie Erin) had a pretty big week, too, because it was my 43rd birthday on December 7th! We had a really fun time celebrating. Here's what we did...

This is the Rollin' Heads Underdog Sports bowling team that we bowl with. We are currently in fourth place in our league, and we're pretty excited because we're going to the playoffs next week. We're pretty sure we're going to win. We did last year! This week the whole team dressed up in a Hawaiian theme. We all wore leis and tropical shirts or sarongs or, in my case, a grass skirt (not real, of course).
Even our mascot, Max the bowling pin (a REAL bowling pin), dressed up in tropical attire. You can see what some of our other costumes were in other weeks as well if you look carefully at Max. One week was cape week, and can you guess what the other week was?? If you guessed fake mustache week, you're right! Do you like Stanley's fancy Hawaiian shirt? He thought he was pretty cool with that on! he also had a flower decoration that went around his waist, but it's not exactly his size, so it sort of covers up his pants. He's still wearing those pants with a darn hole in them!

This is me with my great cake Uncle Jeff baked for me. It was Turtle Brownies. YUMMMM! Stanley really enjoyed the brownies :)

Stanley also got to go to bunco later in the week. Bunco is a dice game, and it's really fun. Some of your moms might play bunco - and maybe you've even played. Stanley was pretty good at bunco, but what he really liked was the White Elephant gift exchange after we finished playing bunco.
Here's one of Stanley's throws of the dice. Since it was on TWOs, he did pretty well, and he got to roll again!

One of the white elephant gifts Stanley particularly liked was this multi spouted teapot from The Nutcracker.
He also really liked the Cahrlie Brown Christmas tree and this scary guy from Monsters, Inc. Isn't his name Mikey or something?

Well, that's it for Stanley's exciting week. Hope you're having a good week at school. WORK hard and learn lots!