Photo Valentines

So I knew they were having a Valentine's get together for kids at church this morning, but I didn't realize until yesterday afternoon that they were exchanging Valentines. Good thing I read Candice's post about photo Valentines. I set Creed up with a heart plate and snapped away. Then after he went to bed I Photoshopped in some simple text. They could have used a little more finesse, but I figured the other babies wouldn't mind. I had to slip in a few of my recent favorite pictures of Creed too.

I emailed them to be developed in an hour and picked them up on the way to the party. So simple and easy!

Orange you glad he's so cute?

Larry worked on Sunday and didn't get to see how cute Creed looked in hand-me-downs from Candice's kids so I decided to do a photoshoot Did I mention that Creed was not feeling cooperative?

When he wakes up from a nap he does not want me to put him down, but after about half an hour of quality cuddle time, he was ready to get down to play.

He doesn't stay still for long so I didn't get many shots, but I did capture him trying to walk a bit more. Last week he took his first steps! He's been cruising along our furniture for months, but he won't walk without something to hold on to, unless he's distracted and doesn't realize that he's walking, but last Thursday he took his first deliberate steps and I was so proud of him.

Columbus Corners

I love this site about local Utah happenings in the Salt Lake and Provo area called Your Heart Out. It's making me think maybe life in Utah won't be so bad. Even if I have no friends, I'll know about some really cool places to explore.

I've been finding myself wishing for a cool site like that about Columbus. There's the Restaurant Widow, of course, full of helpful information about local food, and she does list event around the city every week, but it's just not the same (although I do really love her blog and recommend you check it out if you are in Columbus).

I am not nearly cool enough nor do I have enough freetime put together together the Columbus version of Your Heart Out, I'm just one plain old mom afterall, but I'm doing my best to take advantage of the city until we move so I've decided that the least I can do is feature a spot of event in the Columus are once a week. Some of these are new discoveries and some are old favorites.

This week I decided to drag my friend Jessica to find the new cupcake bakery in German Village that my friend Eva told me about. It's called Bakery Gingham and it's located on the corner of Whittier & Mohawk, attached to the Brown Bag Deli.

I think you can enter from the street under theat pink awning, but we follwed Eva's directions and entered through the Brown Bag Deli. Cut across the deli and go down the hall and you will find yourself here.

Yes, folks, this is the whole bakery, it's tiny, but it's fun. That's owner and baker Amanda in the photo. She opened the shop the day after Thanksgiving and things seem to be going well.

She also makes cakes, but you have to order them ahead of time. Cupcakes run about $2.50 and the flavors are always changing so next time you're in German village stop by and check it out. Creed seemed to enjoy it. I couldn't even get him to look at the camera because he was busy looking for more!

You have to watch out for that Captain Adorable!

The Hudsons had us over for dinner and a play date Sunday evening. I just never get bored of watching Creed and Audrey play together. It's so fun watching Creed with someone just as busy as he is. And Nikki and I thought this picture was funny because the fire in the background makes them look like they are on a romantic date.

Thank you for a wonderful evening David, Nikki, and Audrey!

Trouble right here in Rivercity

Creed is really figuring things out around here. I took these pictures last week when I was being indulgent because Creed was having a crabby teething day.

The bad news? Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.

The good news? We were there to see his prognostication!

I've wanted to spend Groundhog's Day in Punxsutawney since seeing the movie Groundhog Hog, but due to Larry's crazy schedule, we've never been able to go. This year Groundhog Day fell on a Saturday and Larry actually had the day off, but I wasn't sure I was ready to drag Creed along on the journey. Late Friday afternoon, we decided despite the icy weather and baby in tow, we'd better take advantage of our last chance to go before we move west. Larry was more confident that we could pull it off than I was, and I'm so glad that he convinced me to go because it was awesome!!!!! I'm not even sure how to begin to explain this crazy weekend.

We arrived around 11:30, which was not a problem as many of the Punxsutawney businesses stay open all night to accommodate all of the visitors.

We checked out the official gift shop, which ended up being a wise choice because the next day there was a line winding around the block to get into the shop. Punxsutawney has so many things going on to entertain visitors. They had things going on all night so it wasn't necessary to find a place to sleep. The Shadow Scavenge ran from midnight to 2 am so we saw teams scurrying all over town.

We opted to catch a little sleep before heading to Gobbler's Knob to see the ceremony. We knew all the hotels around were long ago booked, but for $5.00 you're welcome to bring your own sleeping bag to the Community Center Crash Pad, where there were playing the movie Groundhog Day in the old theater and people were sleeping along the rooms and hallways in every nook and cranny. It was very ghetto, but Larry says he's glad we did it to get the true Groundhog Day experience, and thankfully the ladies signing people in took pity on us and gave us our own little room so Creed's cries wouldn't disturb anyone else.

Gobbler's Knob opens at 3 a.m. for the celebrations to begin. The night of they determine whether or not you can park in the hills based on the weather. With all of the ice parking wasn't open this year, but there are always bus stops all over town and for $5.00 you can get a roundtrip ride to Gobbler's Knob. With so much traffic, I would recommend doing this even if you could park your own car.

We slept until 5:30 and then bundled up and got on a bus around 6:00, which was perfect for us because we didn't want to spend too much time in the cold with Creed. I have never seen so many school buses lined up and organized in my life. It was amazing!!!!

Things were in full swing when we arrived at Gobbler's Knob. It's a big clearing in the forest in the hills on the skirts of Punxsutawney. There are bonfires around the edges of the clearing for warmth, but the crowd kept things warm enough for us. They also sell hot chocolate and snacks. Starting at 3 a.m. they have live performers and big fireworks show, keeping the crowd fully entertained.

You know Larry can never resist an informational sign!

The movie Groundhog Day wasn't actually filmed in Punxsutawney, but they got a lot of the details right like the event being run by the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle, local dignitaries dressed in top hats and tuxedos with tails. We met one in the crowd (Ed whose official title is
Storm Chaser, this is the home of the Meteorological Society hall of fame after all) who was handing out official Punxsutawney Phil Beanie Babies. He was friendlier than he looks in this photo.

After some time dancing with the rest of the crowd, the sky got later and it was time for the ceremony, we just happened to be right next to the aisle that the National Guard cleared to escort the Inner Circle members to the stage.

All eyes were on the stage, waited for Phil.

The crowd was HUGE I felt like I was in the middle of Times Square on New Years Eve or something. It was estimated that there were 30,000 people in attendance and 10,000 stuck in town because they couldn't make it up on time (they stop buses at 6:30). I'm told all of the college students in the crowd can get a little wild, but we didn't experience any of that because we opted to watch from the family section. The bigger pictures are ones that we took so you can see that we ended up with a pretty good view of the festivities, but I borrowed these from the official Groundhog Club site so you could see a bit better.

The whole crowd chants for Phil until his handlers bring him out at dawn (around 7:30). He speaks to the Groundhog Club president in "Groundhogese"(a language only understood by the current president of the Inner Circle). His proclamation is then translated for the world.

This year he proclaimed, "As I look around me, a bright sky I see, and a shadow beside me. Six more weeks of winter it will be!" And the whole crowd broke into boos. You can watch it here but it's nothing like seeing it live.

Creed thought the whole thing was highly entertaining.The crowd cleared out quickly after the announcement and headed back to town. Many opted to walk back to town as the lines for buses were huge, but the wait was surprisingly fast.

I have never seen a town so dedicated to something. It was amazing, but it was cold so I didn't bring out my camera a lot so you're only getting a small taste of the Groundhog obsession. There are Groundhogs decorating the whole town.

Can you see the ground is covered with thick ice? You could slide down the sidewalks. At one point we even saw a stick of chapstick hidden, frozen in the thick ice under our feet.

There's an art project right now with these sculptures EVERYWHERE and each one is decorated differently.

And the Punxsutawney Zoo only has one animal, groundhogs, of course!

I loved the signs in all of the shop windows.

They had loads of fun activities going on: big breakfast buffets at most of the churches and restaurants, a treasure hunt to collect trinkets from the local businesses, and of course everything groundhog related that you could possibly think of.

Even the geese dress up as groundhogs (I had to take this picture for you Lish!)

There were several people in full groundhog costumes wandering around town.

My favorite part was the hundreds of groundhog hats people were wearing. I didn't think to take hat pictures until the end of our little trip, but here are a few for your enjoyment!

Creed was embarrassed to be seen without a groundhog hat so he disguised himself in my sunglasses and hoped that no one would recognize him!

We drove home through Pittsburgh with a brief stop for lunch at Ikea and made it home around 7:30. We count ourselves blessed as my car broke down at the entrance to our development so we know we were being watched over because I needed to teach in church today and Larry had to work at the hospital and I can't imagine what would have happened if it broke down in freezing cold rural PA! Ironically my car was in for repairs from Monday through Wednesday last week because I thought it just hasn't been running well since it was repaired after our accident.

Did you know?

Did you know that when you upload photos to Blogger, you are actually uploading them to a separate Picasa account, that Blogger automatically created through your Google account?

And did you know that while Gmail has a limit of over two gigs of storage space for free, Picasa limits you to one gig of storage for your photos?

And did you know that Blogger no longer just resizes your images and keeps a small image file like it used to when I just started blogging, it saves the whole file to Picasa (which can fill it up quickly if you have a camera with gianormous file sizes like mine) so if your house burned down or something, all the high res files you ever posted would still be saved out there somewhere in the cyberworld for you? (another Fabulous reason to blog!)

Well, I learned all of that the other night when I went to add a photo to a post and got the message, "You have exceeded your photo upload quota." Yikes! Originally, when I joined blogger they had really limited photo storage, which I should have exceeded a very long time ago, but I never checked to see what the deal is and now I know. Don't worry, for an annual fee you can upgrade your Picasa account size (the minimum is to ten gigs for $20.00/year and that would take me ages and ages to fill).

And did you also know for those of you that have password protected blogs, you still should go into your Picasa account and check the privacy settings there so that you are not sharing your photos, they will not come up in photo searches, and other people cannot download them? Or if you want to, you can share your Picasa accounts and allow all the grandma's out there to order their own copies of pictures of their darling grandkids.

I guess that you learn something new every day!