Just playing around

Creed and I have been enjoying Larry's free time this month. We're still busy experiencing a lot of first with Creed. His first slide (which he didn't care about at all)

And here he is at the zoo. He's starting to love animals so even though it was freezing, he loved the zoo last week.

This is his favorite spot at home. I love sitting on the couch and watching the top of his little head pop over the edge of the couch.

He also got to watch OSU beat Michigan for the first time. We watched the game with our friends the Rices (note Tony's arm is in a cast because he broke his hand last week punching the florr as OSU was losing to Illinois. Yikes!)
Saturday night he had a playdate with Audrey and it's so fun watching them crawl all over each other. At one point they both had their binkies in while they tried to steal each other's binkies.

Congratulations Candice

You all know I am uber proud of my sister Candice and now we can add one more thing to the list of things Candice has achieved. She has been writing articles freelance for Creating Keepsakes for a couple of years now and teaching across the country at Creating Keepsakes University; now she has an official monthly column called "Picture Perfect" which you can check out here. You can also see a lot of video clips of Candice giving pointers on Creating Keepsakes site so if you have a chance, check them out.

Spectacular Spelunking

Sunday night we left Tennessee and drove up to Louisville to visit my brother-in-law Mark. He's there because he's in Actor's Theater's A Christmas Carol so he has Mondays off (theaters are always closed on Mondays). He decided to join us on our trek to Mammoth Caves. We visited Mammoth Caves a few years ago and fingured this might be our last chance to see them before we move back west so even though we had Creed with us and it is their winter season so they don't offer as many tours, we took full advantage and went on two tours. We started out with the 2 hour New Entrance Tour. As you can see, Creed was happy to be there. I can't even begin to explain the entrance to this tour. It was metal staircases about 18" wide that wound all over the place and crossed back over itself. I have no idea how they constructed it. I wish I could have captured a picture that could really explain it, but this was the best that I could do.

This is a picture of the Frozen Niagara formation toward the end of the tour.

And I just included this picture to highlight the fact that my husband is HOT! (except, can you read his shirt here? It says, "To Each his Gnome" and I hate gnomes and I swear he wears this shirt just to taunt me!)

I'm so glad that Mark was there to help us lug Creed around, especially since Creed was asleep for a good portion of this tour.

My least favorite part of the tour? There were a couple of spots that I saw these creatures huddled together and I thought they were spider and it totally freaked me out! (I'd like to point out that this is not an irrational fear like my fear of ducks, I've actually ended up in the hospital more than once from an allergic reaction to a spider bite). It turns out that they are cave crickets. CREEPY!

We had an hour break beofre our next tour so we lunched and Mark modelled.

Then we went on the Historic Tour, which starts at the original entrance of the cave

as pictured here (expect the stairs are obviously not original) We went from some enormous caverns, to this, to . . .

Fat Man's Misery!

It's actually not too scary because it's only tight up to your chest or waist and then there's some open space. And after Fat Man's Misery was Tall Man's Misery

Towards the end of this tour you have to go up these rickety old stairs, which shake a little bit. They are replacing these this winter so we were among the last groups to go up them. Lucky us . . .

While we were there we picked up a National Parks Passport and got it stamped at Mammoth Caves for Creed. I think it will be fun to track all of the National Parks he sees during his life.

After that it was on to Cave City, the nearest town to Mammoth Caves. I'm not really sure how to explain this town. It think most of it was built in the 50's and nothing has changed since then so it's a little rundown and full of all things kitschy, which makes it highly entertaining. Here's a typical shop.

I'm not sure how Mark resisted buying this hat when he looked so good!

And the Wigwams are another good example of the spirit of Cave City (yes, I know they are not wigwams, they are concrete teepees, but they call them Wigwams). Even though they are as far from PC as you can get, I would have been tempted to spend the night if they weren't closed for the season , just so we could say sthat we did.

We had a great time. Thanks Mark for keeping us company and letting us crash with you for a few nights!

We're Baaaa-aaack!

Larry had a surprise few days off so we drove to Tennessee because we hadn't met this little guy, Marissa's baby Logan! We drove down on Friday and then spent Saturday at the Lost Seas (A mystery that I'll have to describe later because I forgot my camera and I don't have pictures from the Garners yet)(edited to add: Marissa just posted her lost seas pictures so you can see them on her blog here). Then Lucky for us, we happen to be there the night the rodeo was in town so Logan, Creed, and I got to experience our first rodeo (big time stuff in this part of TN).

Larry and Mike even sported Rodeo sweatshirts

And my face is frozen in an awkward expression in this picture because this cowboy's hand was getting a little too low! Ahhhhhhhh!

Creed had a ball and Marissa and Mike's. I think Creed and Logan will be chums. They look at each other and smile a lot, but we had to give Creed the remote in this picture so he wouldn't maul poor Logan.All weekend Marissa and Mike called Creed "Giant Baby" and looking at these pictures I guess I can see why. What a difference five months can make!

Doing better today

Creed decided to help me rake the leaves.

Isn't he charming?

I looked out the window, and what did I see?

Autumn is here and with the cold weather comes all sort of nasty viruses. Unfortunately our poor Creedicus had a visit from the Croup bug! He was so sick Thursday night we almost took him to the emergency room even though Larry's a doctor and we knew he had Croup and there wasn't anything they could do for him that we weren't already doing. It was so sad listening to his raspy breaths and barking coughs as he curled up in a ball next to us and struggled to sleep. It didn't get him down for long though. Even with his nasty cough and slimy nose, he's been a pretty happy baby during the day.

Last week I was so excited to see the tree in our front yard changing color.I was even more excited to take Creed out to play in the leaves this weekend, but he did not feel the same way about them. I'll spare you the crying picture that came right after this one.


And I just found these pictures from the other day and thought they were funny enough to share. Here he is pondering the meaning of life.
Let's hope he never really needs glasses because I'm thinking these are not a good look for him.

We wouldn't want to hide those beautiful blue eyes!

This kid is getting so big! Last week we learned that he can crawl up stairs (with Larry behind him of course). Who knows, maybe he could have done it earlier, that was just the first oportunity we gave him. Today he started clapping. I thought maybe it was a fluke, but he did it again tonight. Who knows what will be next?

Another Post About Food

Larry and I love checking out hole-in-the-wall restaurants that come highly recommended. A while back, we were eating at Katzinger's Deli in German Village. When the guy at the next table noticed Larry eating a Reuben, he told us that for the best reuben in town, we HAD to go to Danny's Deli downtown. It was a few weeks before we had a chance because Danny's is only open on weekdays for breakfast and lunch. They are a very small deli known for their corned beef so of course we ordered their classic corned beef. This is what it looks like. This is just the regular, we hear the jawbreaker is massive.

Even Creed was impressed.

We both enjoyed it (and I don't even really like red meat very much), but next time Larry says that he would order it grilled with coleslaw on it.

Chipotle anyone?

So every Halloween Chipotle gives free burritos to anyone dress up as a burrito or taco, which most people interpret to dressing up in a bit of tin foil. We decided to head over early so we could be home to great trick-or-treaters (in Ohio trick-or-treating is during a set time for each community, our was from 6 - 8 p.m.). We rushed over to meet up with the Ortons and Donny came along, but he is not pictured because he took this photo). Reba had an awesome foil belt, Chris had a bow-tie, Ellie had a princess hat, Moira had a bib (which isn't in the picture), Creed had a binky, I had glasses, and Larry had a pointy mustache. You'd think we might have felt a little silly, but mind you every person in the store was wearing foil and some were wrapped from head to toe so compared to them we were quite distinguished.

So fast forward about five hours after trick-or-treating has ended and Jess mentions she's a little hungry. What kind of friends would we be if we let her go to Chipotle alone?

Trick-or-Treat

We've made good use of Creed's Halloween costume. We took him to Boo at the Zoo a week and half ago and he was a big hit. Then yesterday he showed off at the ward Halloween party

For those of you from outside of Ohio, he's The Ohio State University's mascot, Brutus the Buckeye! See the similarities? My mom helped me make his head (and by helped, I mean that I drew it and provided the fabric and pretty much just watched my mom sew)The activity did not go super well. No one was very interested in the activities that we had planned. The grown-ups were supposed to go on a photo scavenger hunt while we did some activities, but not many people joined the scavenger hunt and then it was really hard to get the kids together while there were so many extra adults hanging around. Oh well, we tried, right? My friend asked me to post the scavenger hunt list so here it is:

Scavenger Hunt Items
· Your whole team jumping in the air
· Someone on your team dancing with a witch
· A black cat
· Someone on your team pinching Frankenstein’s cheek
· Someone carving a pumpkin
· A bat
· Someone on your team hugging a scarecrow
· A Spiderweb
· Someone with fangs
· Someone on your team holding hands with a skeleton
· A werewolf
· A smoky cauldron
· Someone on your team being scared of a monster
· Someone wearing fake eyelashes
· A cornfield
· An opposing team in their car
· Someone on your team reading a spooky story
· A funeral home
· A broken mirror

The good news is that the people who went on the scavenger hunt had a lot of fun and afterwards we got to see a lot of our friends like Meg and Alyssa in fun costumes as we trick-or-treated around the church building.

Larry has worked during the last four Halloween's so it was especially fun having him with us to hand out Halloween candyCreed loved hanging out on the lawn and watching the kids in costume run by.We always give out full-sized candy bars and we almost ran out this year because we had more trick-or-treaters than we usually do. The Zozes came and hung out with us as our last trick-or-treaters approached. I hope that you all had a great night too!