Halloween Columbus style....

Halloween was practically perfect for us. Bryan came home and we went out around 6:30. When we left I was worried about it being too early to go out. For some reason I've always felt like it had to be dark to go out.... maybe that's just part of being raised in a family of night-owls? But when we got to the neighborhood we were t-o-ting in there were kids everywhere. We went to a neighborhood across the street from us since there wasn't much Halloween life in the complex. ( I bought a big bag of candy thinking that all the neighborhood kids would be going around, but we only had one trick or treater..... who we had to invite to come by!) Daniel had a blast going door to door. He never spoke to anyone above a whisper and everyone thought he was adorable. (of course they did, right? I couldn't be biased at all could I? Nope, definitely not) We only went on two streets but Daniel got quite the load of candy. (especially when you consider how much we still had at home! I was going to mail it out to my nieces and nephews, but I don't think my siblings would appreciate that, so it'll go to Bryan's lab partners or into the trash!) When we got home Daniel ran inside, dumped his candy out all over the floor and stripped down to his diaper! He was ready for his candy binge. He actually did really well and only had a couple of pieces of candy that night. I've put it up on top of the fridge to slow him (and me!) down. One interesting tidbit I learned from my neighbor who is in dental school is that cavities aren't caused by how much sugar you eat, but by how often you eat it. So maybe I should just let him go all out one day and get it over?

I had fun getting ready for Halloween by decorating our little place. Living far away from family gives you lots of time for other things! We went on a drive a couple of weeks ago and saw some GORGEOUS fall colors. (You really need to click on this to get the full effect, it was gorgeous!)

We stopped at a farm while we were out and bought a ton of pumpkins.(for way cheap!) I love me some pumpkins! (those are also the infamous hurricane vases I spent $5 and a lifetime at walmart for)

I made a Halloween banner that I finished at about 8pm on Halloween. Oh well, I guess I've got it for next year! I'm thinking about laminating the individual letter blocks to make it easier to store and make it last longer. Do you think that would destroy it and make it look chintzy?

I got the idea from Candice Stringham's blog (link on the right of this page). I used Halloween-ish fonts and printed out/hand cut the letters. Then I glued glitter on them and mounted and matted them all. I was a good outlet for me. For some reason cutting paper is really soothing to me. (I'm a weirdo, I know)

Another creative endeavor I am working on is painting our apartment. The main room is mainly a color called "Pebble Path," but I bought a Butternut Squash yesterday (going to make some soup) and it's almost exactly the same color! )(Just pretend you don't see the mess!)

Our accent wall is a stormy gray/blue in suede texture.
I've been planning on painting the kitchen area a lighter shade of blue or brown to kind of just blend in with everything, but I bought a pomegranate the other day that looks stunning with these colors. I can't decide. I may have a red kitchen...... it's all an experiment. It might just be too overpowering. I'm trying to see if I like to be surrounded by color or if I like the feel of a more "clean" pallet. We'll see I guess. Any thoughts?

Hi, My name is Suzanne... (collective response from my readers, "Hi, Suzanne") and I'm a picture-aholic. It's been way too long since I've posted and I've got a ton of photos to unload on you all. I only hope you can stand how cute my little boy is! We stopped at Dairy Queen the other day and Daniel had his first ice cream sandwich (I think) He LOVED it!

Okay, so maybe he's a little too excited about this icecream, but isn't he cute??Then we went to COSI (children's science center) to see the Bob the Builder exhibit. Daniel couldn't stand still again, we spent the whole time running back and forth between the stations set up.Afterwards we stopped to get some costumes for a party at our friend's house. It was a lot of fun and we got to get to know some more people better.Daniel was a "dragon" (dinosaur costume) but loves wearing my witches hat. He's started to close his eyes when he sees me pull out my camera. Maybe that should tell me something.....

This was him the other day. I was folding laundry and he kept asking me for cheese, I told him just a minute a dozen times or so. And then he stopped coming in and asking.... I went out and he had gotten the whole block of cheese out of the fridge and was eating it chunk by chunk. Little punk! He sure loves his cheese!

Bryan and Daniel take short walks every morning before we take Bryan to school. Daniel lives for his short walks with Daddy.

The other day Daniel and I went and explored more of German Village. I can't get enough of that place. It actually reminds me a lot of my grandmother, no clue why, she wasn't German, but the quaintness of the area makes me think of her. I know she would have loved it. There is this really awesome tree there that is very unique....

After the park we stopped at Cup-O-Joe for a hot chocolate and muffin while we waited for the bookstore next door to open. It was soooo good! It reminded me of the hot chocolate I had in Italy last year, yum! Daniel sure liked the muffin too.

The bookstore we went to was incredible. It's called The Bookloft and it has 32 rooms of books! I could spend way too much money in there!!!

The other day Daniel discovered the joy of playing with bubbles in the tub. Luckily they were made with the "no tears" shampoo!!!

Next to our house..... (click on it to see it larger)

So, I'm doing a lot of updating on my blog, this post is about a week ago last Friday....
Tonight we went out to dinner with some of Bryan's friends from school. They all wanted to try Schmidt's and we can't seem to get enough, so we went with them. I was able to walk around just a bit with Daniel while we waited for our table and just fell in love with the area. It's all of these old houses that have been restored and revived. Some day when I have my dream house it's going to look old, with all of the interesting details and architecture, but function as new. I love the thought of reclaiming the history of a house through restoration. (although if I have to build new I certainly won't cry about it!) Anyways, I loved these entries and a million more...

This part of town has it's original cobble stone streets and it just feels like you've stepped back into time. Dinner was a lot of fun. There were two other couples and two girls from Bryan's anatomy group. Everyone got along great and we all just couldn't stop talking. We'll definitely have to get together with these people again.

On Saturday I headed out to Walmart to get a few groceries and a cable to hook our computer up to our TV. We don't get KBYU in our cable package, so we streamed it from the Internet and watched it on our TV, pretty cool huh? It's crazy how much things have changed in the last couple of years, could you even have imagined this technology 10 years ago?
Conference was wonderful. Every year it seems shorter and shorter. I just love the messages that were shared and the spirit that was felt. I also love getting to see some of my old friends in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, it's just fun to see who's doing what with their lives. Bryan and I were also very excited about Henry B. Eyring's new calling to the First Presidency. It means we'll get to hear from him more often. This was how Daniel spent every session of conference...

Daniel and I drove out to Circle S Farms last week with a group of women from the ward we'll be attending in January. It was an absolutely beautiful drive through a rural area and I really wish I could have gotten some pictures, but as I was driving, I figured I'd better not try it! It was a really fun place with lots to do. They had a hay barn that had slides and play areas, a corn maze, a hay ride and a pumpkin patch. Daniel particularly loved the "lawnmower" they had for the kids to play on, I think we went back to it more than 4 times.

When we got to the barn of hay he scampered up the hay bales as fast as he could and stood atop it yelling, "oh my cows!! Whereare (said as one word) you?!" he was searching hi and low and couldn't find them.

When we got to the pumpkins he was off and running, I had to get very creative in how I kept up with him as there were many pumpkin obstacles in the way.
I finally caught up with him to snap a shot in the pumpkins.......but only because his foot got stuck in between some of them! He sat there saying "Mommy, help, my foot stuck!" I looked to make sure he wasn't hurt, then took a few shots before I helped him. I have totally turned into my father! (he always took pictures first and helped later! but I think it's how we got some of our favorite photos)

We hopped onto the hayride after picking out our pumpkins. Daniel said "Mom, I'm hot!" and I said, "really? so hot you're melting?" and this was his response:

It was really miserably hot, around 90 degrees! It was pretty crazy. I think we might have gotten just a bit of heat stroke that day.....

So I woke up this morning kind of excited to get going, I was going to paint the family room today and was happy to get it started. I took Bryan to school at 9 and planned on a quick stop at walmart to pickup the paint. (my neighbor just told me to buy it there, otherwise I never would have thought of walmart) I already knew what color I wanted, so it was going to be a quick stop. I waited at the paint counter for 20 minutes, then decided to look for someone to help me. No one to be found, I stopped at the clearance section and found some nice hurricane vases for $5, put them in the cart and tried to find an employee. Waited for another 15 mins., remembered I needed a treat to pass along for the Halloween Ghost thing (where you leave treats for someone with a cute little ghost that tells them to pass it on to someone else), go and get treats and a couple other things. I try to find someone one more time, again no one to be found. ( I think they had a couple of exec.s there and were having some meetings, but still.....) decided I'd come another day and deal with it later. (or most likely go to Home Depot where I'll actually get some help...) I finally make it to the checkout and go to the express lane, I had been there much longer than I had wanted to be. I watched the prices as the checker scanned my items. (just like my mother taught me to do) and stopped her when she rang up the vase and it said $20. I showed her the price tags, etc and she called her supervisor over, who then called someone across the store, etc. etc. etc. to make a very long story short I had to wait at the cash register for 30+ mins while it all got straightened out! I was there for more than 2 hours. Why do I keep going back to Walmart????? I went home and decided to sit down for a minute with a glass of milk while Daniel played with his new bob the builder play dough set (another Clearance find). I had opened the window to cool it down a bit and now it was freezing, (which is actually very welcome considering it's been in the 90's for the last couple of days) I put my glass down where I *thought* it was safe and worked on getting the window to close. Just as it slid into place I heard something sloshing and looked down just in time to see my milk pour into the crevices of my couch. That's right my couch. Whoever came up with the saying, "Don't cry over spilt milk," was a moron. Of course that moron probably never even imagined that another moron (me) would spill it into their couch, but still, a moron. Don't cry over spilt water? Fine, water dries and doesn't leave a stench behind when it does. So today, instead of painting my family room a beautiful shade of whickam gray, I am spending it washing and wiping and dabbing milk out of my sofa.... and probably crying just a little about my spilt milk.

Babies eating lemons

too funny, makes me giggle...

well, a lot of stuff has happened since I updated last, but I'll spare us all an extremely long post and just share this last weekend. Bryan's parents came for a visit, which made us all SO happy. It was great to see them and Daniel loved getting to play with them again. He was too excited to sleep much while they were here and has been making up for it since they left. (the other night he slept from 6 pm until 9 am straight!) We got up late on Saturday and went to COSI a children's science museum. The Bob the Builder exhibit was opening that day, so I was a bit nervous about crowds, but it wasn't bad at all. Daniel was in heaven. He just ran from one thing to the next. as soon as I got to him and had my camera ready he was off again. He also got to meet Bob the builder!

I thought it was too cute when he got his tool belt and hat on and then grabbed the tool box. He went straight over to Bob to give it to him.

They had all of the trucks there for the kids to play in. Daniel didn't even notice we were there, he was so busy. If you're in the area, I highly suggest it for little kids. (I saw some girls there too) I know that we'll be going back very soon.

After visiting with Bob, we went to German Village. It's a small section of town that has been preserved renovated and is thick in German Heritage. We ate at Schmidts Sausage Hause, which has incredible food. I think I could eat there everyday it's so good. Then we went for a short walk through Schiller park (named after the Poet until WWII, then changed to Washington Park, then back to Schiller more recently) and let Daniel run around a bit. We wanted to attend Oktoberfest to check out all of the arts booths, but couldn't find it. So instead we went to the Prime Outlets in Jeffersonville, about 40 mins away. It was nice to have a look, but they were a bit too crowded for my taste. I like to have them all to myself! On Sunday we got up really early to attend my in-laws old ward in Washington, PA. The drive was beautiful (what I was awake for anyways). The people I met were sooo nice. It was fun to hear some of the stories from Bryan's childhood. On our way out of church Daniel found his first Caterpillar. He tried to convince it not to be scared of us.

Afterwards we went to downtown Pittsburgh just to have a look around. I'm definitely going to have to go back sometime with my camera and get some shots, it was a great place to look around. We found a little place to eat and got a sandwich. All of the sandwiches came with fries in them, which I guess is quite common in Pittsburgh. I couldn't figure out how in the heck to get it into my mouth, it was so big. It also had a ton of sauerkraut in it, it was so good!

We also parked by the PPG (Pittsburgh Paint and Glass) building, which is incredible! It's a complex of about 4 buildings made completely of glass.

more to follow...