Bring It On

Bring on the fall weather.  

We are ready for you!
(Isn't she the cutest??)

Nerd Alert

Ok before everyone I know who wears glasses gets offended- let me clarify something.  I don't think that everyone who wears glasses is a nerd.  Glasses can look very smart and dignified and even cool on some people.  I just don't think I am one of those people.  Maybe it's because I was teased about my glasses so much as a kid but I just truly despise wearing glasses.  I never ever ever wear mine.  And that is why I haven't gotten new glasses since I switched to wearing contacts the summer before 8th grade.  However, after living with an eye infection for over two months, Richard decided to share a little present with me- and now I have his eye infection.  So now I am stuck wearing glasses for who knows how long.  There is no way I could function with my glasses that practically haven't seen the light of day since 1997.  So I now have these beauties to wear.  

(for the record, I felt completely ridiculous taking a picture of myself for this)

Much better than my 7th grade glasses but every time I see myself in glasses all I can think is NERD.  I guess I better get over my complex soon if I'm going to end up wearing my glasses for the next two months like Richard had to.  Or maybe I'll just lock myself in my room and not come out again until my eye infection is gone....

Fun at the Zoo

 

 We finally made it over to the Columbus Zoo.  It's the #1 zoo in America so it's supposed to be pretty great.  And it was!  It was enormous- we were there for a little over 2 hours and probably only saw half of the zoo.  That would normally be a very good thing, but for me who hurts a lot when I have to walk around, it was actually a bad thing.  But other than that, I didn't have anything bad to say about the zoo.  There were a bunch of animals that I had never even heard of before and just about every animal I know about as well.  My favorites are always the tigers but when we first got up to them one was lying down and the other was really far away.  I told them that they couldn't disappoint me and be lame because they are my favorites and they must have listened!  The one who had been far away came right up to the glass and paced in front of us for a good 10 mins.  

It was awesome and Kaylee kept growling when he would walk past, so she must have had something important to say to him.  

They also had a little petting zoo and Kaylee loved petting the goats.  That is, she loved it until one of the goats decided to come up and rub up against her mom, which caused her mom to give a startled scream, which caused Kaylee to be freaked out by the goats.  

 Oops!  Hopefully Kaylee will continue to be an animal lover and not end up like her mom.  

Kaylee was really cute with this baby elephant statue- she kept going up to it and saying "HUGS!" and giving it a big hug.  I guess it looked lonely or something.

As we were leaving, we ran across a bunch of ducks swarming the people who were eating.  I think chasing the ducks was probably Kaylee's favorite part of the whole zoo.  Maybe next time we'll skip the zoo and just take her to the duck pond!

Drugstore

If you were to look at our counter right now, you'd probably think we lived with a grandparent who was on their deathbed.  Welcome to our drugstore:

This isn't even all of the prescriptions we've had in the last two months- this is just the ones we are currently taking. We love living in Ohio, but apparently Ohio doesn't love us!  Since the beginning of August, we have had eight trips to some kind of doctor.  EIGHT!!  I think that is some kind of record.  Plus we have two more trips planned for next week, although those are for well check-ups and not because we're sick or have more infections (knock on wood). I always tease my germ-a-phobe sister about being sick all the time and now I guess karma has come back to bite me.  I just hope this pattern doesn't continue because I really don't know how many more trips to the doctor I can handle.  On a positive note, it's helping me get really familiar with Columbus because I now know where all the doctor's offices and pharmacies are located :)

Biggest Fan

Kaylee's new obsession is the word "more".  Anything we see or eat or do, she wants more of.  However, it was taken to the extreme tonight as we were driving home from Richard's birthday dinner (more on Richard's bday to come).  We passed a giant blow-up version of the Buckeye mascot in someone's front lawn and Richard said, "look Kaylee- there's Brutus!"  This was her first introduction to him and she only saw it for about .25 seconds but the rest of the ride home she kept saying "More. Brutus. More!"  We couldn't do anything to convince her that Brutus wasn't there anymore and she would NOT drop it.  We caught part of the ride home on video to prove it:

 Richard even had to pull up a picture of Brutus online when we got home so that she would stop saying it.  School spirit is HUGE out here so I guess Kaylee just wants to fit in.  We definitely know who Brutus's #1 fan is- go Buckeyes!

Mark, get set, GO!

One of the many good things about having an almost completely empty room downstairs?  Lots of space to play!  Kaylee recently discovered the fun of racing and wants to do it again and again and again and again...  As soon as she reaches the end, she immediately turns around and says "more" while hurrying back to the starting line.  If she weren't so darn cute we wouldn't do it so many times!  I love having a toddler!!

All About Columbus

Lately I haven´t wanted to blog very much, mostly because I feel like there hasn´t been anything interesting to blog about.  But my sister reminded me that even if I do posts that other people don´t want to read, I´ll want to look back on them and remember so I´m probably going to do a lot more boring posts from now on :) 

Moving to Columbus hasn't been quite as dramatic as a change as I thought it would be. Probably my favorite thing about Ohio is the GREEN.  There are SO many trees here, it is unbelievable.  A lot of the main streets I drive down look like this:

We'd have to hike really far up the mountains to see this many trees in Utah.  Also, there are parks (and golf courses) everywhere!  I am really excited for fall- I can't wait to see what everything looks like in all the beautiful autumn colors.  

One thing that has been fun is the attention that Kaylee gets everywhere we go. People must not be used to too many kids running around because she gets spoiled with all the extra attention.  People in Utah always said hi and told her how cute she was, but here it seems like everyone just falls in love with her immediately.  But really, could you resist this face??

One big difference that has been a little bit annoying is the lack of choices in supermarkets.  Not a lack of supermarkets, because there is a Kroger on pretty much every other block, but there isn't a ton of other places to shop for food. It's really different coming from Provo where I lived 5-10 mins away from Macey's, Albertson's, Smith's, Walmart, Target, and probably a few others I'm forgetting about.

Another HUGE difference for us has been driving 25 mins to get to church.  We pass a million churches on the way from all different faiths but this is a whole new experience for us.  It makes me really not excited for 9:00 church but that won't happen for another year and a half so maybe we'll start going to the family ward then :)  Right now we go to the married student ward, which is TINY.  I'm shocked they let it be it's own ward!  But it's really nice because we've gotten to know a lot of people quickly and everyone seems to take care of everyone else.  Plus it helps that half of the ward is in our same apartment complex.

On the other hand, we are still only 15 mins away from a temple which is amazing!  Before the Columbus temple was built, they had to travel 8 hours to go to the one in D.C.  I'm SO grateful that's not the case anymore because I don't think we'd ever really be able to go.  How do you find a babysitter for that?

My only REAL complaint about Ohio?  The water. There is so much chlorine in the water that it tastes like bleach to me.  Unless I have it really really cold, I can't gag it down.  Maybe I'll get used to that eventually...but for now I always have a ton of ice handy. 

We did take a video of our apartment but I can't get it to work on blogger right now so I'll keep trying.  In the meantime, I guess you'll just have to come visit us to see what our apartment really looks like!!

Who's The Boss?

A few nights ago at dinner, Kaylee lifted her hands high above her head like this:

Then she turned to me and said Mom?  And wouldn't stop saying mom or lifting her hands until I copied her.  Then she did the same thing with Richard.  Now she will just randomly do that during meals and wait patiently until we copy her.  Believe me, I have tried to resist and will sometimes tell her that I'm not going to do it.  But she is really good at giving me puppy-dog eyes and saying "please?" in her cute little voice so I haven't been able to fully resist so far.  We know who is really in charge in our house.  I just hope nobody has been able to see us through the window...