Beauty!!

I know I gush about how beautiful it is here, but it really is. Maybe it's just since it's so different from where I've lived before, but it really is beautiful. I love the mountains in Utah - they are so majestic and beautiful - but it's not exactly green there. :) And I thought California was pretty - and it definitely is - but everything here is SO NATURALLY GREEN! My parents have a Garden of Eden backyard in CA but, you know, they water it a lot. :) Here it's just green on its own! Everywhere! Sprinklers? Psh, never heard of them. I love it.

Anyway, Eli's been a little under the weather, so we've been cooped up all week and we were both going crazy. So I decided to take the boys to the park this morning. It had rained in the wee hours in the morning, so I didn't think anyone would be there - and I was right. We had it all to ourselves. It was beautiful. I brought a towel to wipe down the playground equipment and after Eli played for awhile (and I took a gazillion pictures) we went on a short walk (where I took another gazillion pictures) and then headed home. I'll definitely be going back to that trail though because holy cow! It was gorgeous. I didn't have good shoes on for a real trek, so we'll go another day.

The leaves are starting to change so I wanted to get a bunch of pictures of all the green before they all changed. I'll have to take a lot more in a few weeks when they are really changing because that will be beautiful too, I'm sure. Sorry for the intense picture dump, but I couldn't decide what to leave out. Enjoy. :)

PS-Jeremy is surviving midterms this week! Yes, midterms already. He had one yesterday that he ACED and then he had 2 today (no results yet) and has one tomorrow. Go husband!

Pittsburgh Fun

On Saturday I met up with some ladies & their kids at the park for a free "Alphabet Trail and Tales" thing put on by the city. They had lots of fun things for kids - storytelling (reading), poems, puppet show, petting zoo, face painting, balloon animals, etc., etc. We went for a couple hours and Eli seemed to have a good time. He especially liked the puppet show and the reading of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". :) It was cute. Connor was a dream baby in the stroller and Jeremy was a gem and dropped us off and picked us up so we didn't have to park 5 blocks away.

Here Eli's flirting with his little friend Annabelle. She's 13 months and has a brother a few months older than Eli that he likes to play with too, but Eli likes to follow Annie around and play with her. It's pretty cute.
Reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". Eli's on the left.
Cutie boy hangin' out.
And...he's asleep.

Then today I took the kids to the zoo again! Good thing there's a lot to do around here. Jeremy thought I'd be lonely - psh, I'm havin' a ball! ;) Haha. Anyway, I met up with some friends and we had a great time. We stayed longer than I anticipated, but it was really fun. I remembered my camera this time (yahoo!), but the animals didn't do anything especially noteworthy. Oh well. I'll keep bringing it and hopefully catch something exciting. :)

The baby elephants were drinking from their momma. I thought it was so sweet. :)
Smile!
Shark attack!!!
Snooze-head.
Eli was especially taken with this Mexican Lizard. (Ew! what a boy)

Not in the mood for a smile.

It was fun! I'm sure we'll go again soon.

Fun at the Zoo

Labor Day was cold and rainy here, but we decided to make the most of it anyway. Jeremy had spent most of the day Saturday doing school work, and still had some to do on Monday afternoon, but on Monday morning, we decided to go to the zoo! Some friends of ours were planning on going to a nearby lake, but the weather was so crummy that everyone canceled their plans. We looked into going to museums, but most of them were closed for the holiday, so we decided to brave the rain and just go for it!

It was great! It was our first time going to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium. It is such a great zoo! It was amazing. Even though it was rainy, the animals were out and about and it was so fun! Not to mention there was hardly anybody else there so we got a good view of everything. :) It was pretty much us, a few other families, and a whole bunch of Amish people. Did you know the Amish went to the zoo? I did not.

Anyway, it was so much fun. We saw gorillas rolling around and beating their chests, we saw sharks swimming right over our heads, tigers running around jumping on each other and all sorts of other things - polar bears, seals, penguins, tons of fish, octopus, giraffes, lion, leopards, monkeys, gazelles, etc, etc.

I forgot my camera but...we bought a year pass so we'll be back! It's a really great deal. You only have to go 2-3 times to pay for it and a bunch of our ward members have them too, so it will be a great activity for me and the kids to do. There's a girl in the ward who goes every week! Awesome. Of course Eli loves the zoo. Even though I didn't get any pictures, I tried to get a video of him talking about it. He was very chatty right before I brought out the camera and then of course he quieted down. But the best part is Connor laughing hysterically at Eli. Enjoy!

Okay, so I had two videos, but the second one would not load! I've been trying for two days. Lame. It had a better view of Connor, but oh well. Maybe it will work later.

Nature Walk

So last Saturday, Jeremy had to be at school at 11, so I decided to drop him off and take the boys on a nature walk. I had read online that Schenley Park had a lake you could walk down to, so I figured we'd do that and take some pictures and enjoy the outdoors. I strapped Connor in the Bjorn and made Eli walk and off we went!

Well it didn't go exactly as planned. After asking a few people at the playground where the steps down to the lake were (online it said they were next to the playground) and following those instructions only to have to go turn around and go back because they were totally wrong, I decided to get out the stroller instead and just go walk across the bridge to look at the lake and call it good.

I'm glad we went with this plan, because when we looked out on the bridge, we saw this:

Yeah, lovely brown "lake". Not exactly what I had in mind, but Eli still thought it was cool, so it all worked out. :) And you can see how incredibly green everything is here! It's amazing. So we walked across the bridge to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and looked at the lily pads in the pond and then walked back and ended at the playground.

That tall tower is Pitt's library (University of Pittsburgh) and a lot of those buildings are part of their campus. Now if you turn about 110 degrees to the right you see this:

If you were to go down that street ahead and to the right, you would wind around to CMU - where Jeremy goes. Pitt and CMU are right next door to each other.

So anyway, it wasn't exactly the nature walk I had in mind, but we still had fun! Connor zonked in the stroller and Eli got to run around and get really tired for his nap, so all in all I guess it was a success. :)

(above - views from/of the playground)

It was overcast that day - which also made it quite humid - so my pictures weren't as great as I hoped and I was sweating like a pig, so we'll have to try it again another day. There are a million trails all through the park, so maybe when I have my handsome husband with me to help carry one of our wee ones we can try again.