Exploring Cincinnati!

As of Wednesday, we'll have been here SIX MONTHS! Crazy! We definitely have not had the drive to explore our new city like we usually do when we move somewhere. Not having that deadline changes things! And owning a home and having lots to do to take care of it on the weekends makes a difference too. Anyway, we decided to finally go into the city on Friday! Eli had the day off of school and Jeremy only works half days on Fridays, so after lunch we headed into the city. It was a beautiful cloudy mid-70s day. We parked in Newport, Kentucky, which is just across the river from Cincinnati. We parked in this area called "Newport on the Levee" that had all these really cute shops all along the river. I'd love to go back on a date night sometime to walk around and have dinner there.

Anyway, so we parked the car and walked across the "Purple People Bridge" into Cincinnati! It's a pedestrian-only bridge that connects Kentucky and Ohio and is about a 1/2 mile long. It was fun to walk across the river and see the boats and everything.

 Cincinnati in the background, across the river.

 Purple People Bridge in the background. It was more of a light periwinkle, I think it had faded from its original purple. Eli was disappointed it wasn't really purple.

Hello big tummy! Yikes, it's hard to take a flattering pregnant photo.

We hung out by the river for a bit once we got across and then we walked almost a mile more into downtown to "Fountain Square". I thought it would be cooler than it was, but oh well. We saw lots of big buildings along the way and tried to make it fun. Fountain Square also has a Graeter's Ice Cream shop which made it a big hit. Cincinnati is famous for Graeter's Ice Cream - and for good reason. It is SOOO good. They are most famous for their giant delicious chocolate chunks in a lot of their flavors. Everyone enjoyed eating their ice cream cone outside and then we headed back toward the river.

 L to R - chocolate chip, chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip, double chocolate chip (that was mine), and toffee chocolate chip. Their chocolate is really good! Our all-time favorite flavor of theirs is the black raspberry chocolate chip, but we were trying to branch out.

We stopped at a little park and let the kids play on the playground before crossing the bridge again. It was a LOT of walking - over 3 miles - but the kids did really well! They were all really tired by the end, and skipping Anna's nap to walk that far probably wasn't the best idea, but it was fun to get out and do something. Cincinnati has a lot of great museums too, but I wanted to save those for winter when we can't be outside.

 Making silly faces in front of Proctor & Gamble's headquarters. It's hard to tell in the pics, but this building was HUGE! There were actually multiple buildings and extensive grounds. P&G and Kroger are both headquartered here in Cincinnati, and therefore are major employers for people around here.

 More of the Proctor & Gamble headquarters...and more silly faces.

After we got home, we ate dinner and then had a Family Movie Night watching the new Cinderella! It was so good! I think everyone enjoyed it, even Anna, which is saying a lot. She usually gets bored half way through family movie night, but she stayed interested the whole time. It was a good day!

Furniture Fun

September has been the month for furniture projects! Back in August we got bunk beds for the boys in their room. Connor was still in a toddler bed and had seriously outgrown it, so we knew we needed to do something. Their room isn't really big enough for two single beds plus their dresser, and they've been wanting bunk beds forever, so we decided to do it! It is so fun. I also found some cute bedding on sale and got that for them as well. Bedrooms seem to always be the lowest decorating priority for me but I'd really been wanting to make their room nicer. I decorated Eli's room when he was a baby, but seriously that's about the only time anyone's bedroom has been done. (Ours included sadly, but it's going to happen next year!!) All boy decor/bedding I had was very baby, so it was time to move on to something a little older. I'm hoping all of this will last them a long time!

Our bedroom furniture in our house is a combination of hand-me-downs and Craigslist purchases, so therefore nothing matches. I got the boys a dresser off of Craigslist for $30 right before Anna was born and then when we were in Oregon, someone gave us a nightstand for their room. I decided I wanted to try painting them so they would match the new beds. The internet is full of furniture redo photos, it's just the thing to do these days I guess, so it was easy to research how to do it. The boys' walls are a really nice grayish blue. Connor's favorite color is blue and Eli's is red, so that's why I got the blue and red bedding. They both said they wanted a red nightstand, so I decided to paint the nightstand red and the dresser black. They turned out great!! I was so excited. It was actually a lot easier than I anticipated and they look completely transformed now!

Dresser before:

After:

 Nightstand sort of before/during (only pic I had).

And after. The red matches the cute baseball knob it came with.

 It's so fun to have things actually coordinated. I also put up that valance that was in the office when we moved into the house, and just happened to match perfectly in their room. I just need to get some things on the walls someday and it will actually be a finished bedroom!

My last project this month was this coffee table. We'd been searching for a long time for either a coffee table or an ottoman. I couldn't decide which I wanted, and I didn't want to spend very much money. I was having difficulties also because our couch is brown. Dark brown. Very brown. This was a conscious choice to get a brown couch, but the truth is I don't really like brown. In a perfect world, I would have a light gray or cream couch or something, but after having a tan couch with children, I knew I could never do that again...so we went with brown. And it's great! It hides dirt like a boss, because it's...the color of dirt. Anyway, so I didn't want a brown coffee table because the couch is already very brown...as we've discussed. So after way too much searching I decided to get this coffee table.

I ordered it online for a very reasonable price and it came in a natural light unfinished hardwood as pictured, so you could stain it however you want (we had to assemble it too). I already had some stain from making our frame for our map (above the couch), so it worked great! I used a combination of two stains, like we did for the map, and then put several coats of a sealant on top. I really like how it turned out! It lightens up the room and makes it look more finished. I'm glad it has a shelf too for magazines, books, games, etc. It's so nice being able to put our feet up now and play games! Win!

 I also got some new (inexpensive, literally shipped from China, thank you Amazon) pillow covers for the pillows that came with our couch. The original pillows were also...wait for it...brown, so I wanted something lighter. I'm really liking the way it all turned out! Please ignore the slightly crooked pictures of the kids on the walls. I can't get them to stay straight and it drives me nuts. End of story.

And now that I think about it, I don't think I actually ever blogged about our beautiful map. Those that have been to our houses in the past know that we used to have a big classroom-looking laminated map up where we had lines drawn everywhere we'd been/driven to and stickers marking places we've lived. We loved that map, but I decided when we moved here I wanted something a little nicer looking than the school room look. So I ordered a more antique-y looking map online for $15 and Jeremy said he would make me a frame! There's a friend in our ward who loves wood-working and has a big shop in his basement and offered it to Jeremy anytime he wanted. So he went over there one Saturday with some wood he got from a discarded pallet at work and they set to work making the frame. When it was done, we stained it and mounted it to a piece of that insulation board I had leftover form the homemade bulletin board thing I did, and now we have a beautiful framed map on our wall! We don't have lines for road trips this time, just pins marking places we've lived. It's a conversation starter every time we have anyone over and is meaningful to our family since we've moved so much!

It's nice to have our main room more finished. This is where we spend a lot of our time! And yes, that's the beanbag chair I mentioned being Eli's happy place - right next to the basket of library books. :) I think I'll be in trouble if I ever try to replace that with something more grown-up looking. Home sweet home!

Quick Update

It's September 22nd! My favorite time of the year is finally here. FALL!! The mornings are getting cooler and crisper and it's finally not so hot. I love it! Since it's been about 2 months since I've updated on here, I figured it was time.  Let's see here....

• Jeremy just returned from 8 days out of town. I thought I may not survive, but somehow everyone stayed alive and relatively functional. He went to London, England; Dusseldorf, Germany; and Strasbourg, France for work. Pretty exciting! It was a busy trip and he didn't have much time for sight seeing, but it was still pretty cool. Luckily we were able to talk everyday via skype and texting. He showed us all his pictures last night and the boys thought everything was "awwwesome". He also brought us home some yummy European chocolates. We're so glad he's home!
  
  (The Kinder eggs had toy airplanes inside of them. Those were definitely a hit!)
  
  
• Eli started school a month ago. It's going really well! I was nervous for the adjustment to 1st grade after half-day kindergarten, but he has done great. It's amazing the difference a year makes. He seems happy most days and never complains about going to school. I'm proud of how responsible he is. Jeremy says he's the most responsible 6 yr old ever. He gets himself up every morning about 6:55 and gets dressed and heads downstairs to do his piano practicing, without being reminded or asked. It's so nice getting that done before school. After school he comes home and has a snack and usually goes to his usual spot on the bean bag chair to read for a little while. I call that his "happy place". Before too long, we usually have a knock on the door from the neighbor kids and for the next couple hours until dinner, all my kids and three of the neighbors are usually running around outside jumping on the trampoline, playing freeze tag, or playing a game of baseball. It makes me so happy to have them active and enjoying childhood! Especially after being confined to a classroom all day. I'm usually able to make dinner in peace too which is another plus. :)
  
• Oh, this probably should have been the first update but everyone who reads this probably already knows - we're expecting baby #4! I'm over 17 weeks now and feeling good. Morning sickness kicked my behind this time around. I really struggled until 13-14 weeks and it was rough. I didn't throw up much, but I just felt really awful all the time - day and night. I'm so glad that's over!! We get to find out the gender in just a few weeks and we are very excited! Everyone in the family seems to think it's a boy (Anna is adamant that it is a boy, silly girl), so we'll see...
• I've been on a decorating kick lately. We did a ton of painting when we first moved in and then I told myself I just had to shut off my want-to-decorate eyes for a few months so we could save and budget for what we wanted to do next. Well, it's been about 6 months since we moved in (crazy!) and we started doing a few more things again. Jeremy did a couple more small painting projects and I repainted some furniture items we already had and stained and finished a new coffee table for our family room. I'll be sure to put some pictures up soon! One of my favorite hobbies is decorating and I told Jeremy it's really good one of my other favorite hobbies is budgeting/finance (I know, I'm weird), so I keep myself in check. Luckily all our projects this month were very inexpensive but made a huge difference! Next month we plan to paint the living/dining room and then everything on the main floor will be done. Woohoo!

That's about it for now! I know I need to put a lot more pictures up and catch up on a few more things from the summer, but I just wanted to get something on here to get myself going again. Stay tuned!

Summer Phone Pics

Here is a random assortment of pictures from the rest of the summer...I'm kicking myself for not getting my good camera out, but I'm blaming morning sickness. I lost motivation for a lot of things during those months. Oh well...

This was at the Milford Street Eats or something like that. It was so underwhelming and disappointing I don't even want to talk about it. It was supposed to have a "great variety" of food trucks from Cincinnati, but apparently the midwest doesn't really know what that means. The variety was pizza, hamburgers, fried mac and cheese, etc. Oh Oregon, we miss you so much!!!

(We salvaged the night by getting ice cream. It was very hot!)

Some of our yummy garden produce!

We went to Indiana one weekend in August so we could attend the Indianapolis Temple Open House. It was beautiful!

And so fun to spend the weekend with the Weavers. Cousin heaven!

Poor Connor gets eaten alive by mosquitos, even with repellant on. This was the day after we spent an evening working in our community garden. He had THIRTY on his face and neck alone. Poor baby.

Selfie of my long hair. I got it chopped a month ago and I'm still mourning the loss of my hair. I hate it! Ugh, so sad. You will not see a pic of my new haircut. I like the length okay, but the cut it terrible, so I'm waiting for the layers to grow so I can fix it...sniffle, sniffle

Yeah, I cut about 7 inches.

Anna with "Baby Colton" or "My Colton". We have a little one year-old in our ward named Colton and Anna LOVES him and has since named her baby doll after him. She's pretty cute.

This is what happens with pregnant brain. "Honey, can you stop at Walmart on your way home and get 5 dozen eggs, we're out of eggs." Oops, there was already 3 dozen in the other refrigerator....we ate a lot of eggs that week!

Connor and Anna have been playing SO well together since Eli's been in school. They are best buds. They'll go off together for hours and have a ball.

"I'm going to school" wearing Eli's backpack and shoes. :)

This was at the Nature Center. It's hard to see but this was a GIANT snapping turtle. It was so awesome!

Beautiful morning at the park!

Fearless Anna.

I bought 50 lbs of peaches and we had a canning party Labor Day weekend! We got 26 quarts I think. Yum!

This was during the last week the pool was open! We spent the whole morning one day at the pool and hardly saw another person. I'm proud of my kids and their swimming abilities after having a pool all summer. Connor and Eli can both swim independently now. Connor's not super comfortable in the deep end yet, but both of them jump in, swim a good length, and can get a breath and keep going. Hooray! Anna is still using floaties of course, but I have a feeling she'll be braver next summer.

Cutie girl.

I often lay down in the afternoons when Anna takes a nap. Sometimes Connor takes a nap, and sometimes he just has some quiet time looking at books, playing legos, or coloring. I woke up from a short nap one day and thought it was unusually quiet and came downstairs to find Connor like this. Sleep won out! I love this kid.

I still have some catching up to do, but I'm getting there!