Roughhousing

Courtney grabbed the camera and caught us boys doing some roughhousing.  Leo's getting old enough now to be able to join in a little bit!  Even though he couldn't seem to open his eyes for the camera, I'd say he was having a good time. 

S'mores!

Another new thing we tried out lately was building a fire and having s'mores in our backyard.  Luke did a great job using his wagon to gather sticks.

Leo "helped" out a bit, too. 

Courtney was our resident fire-building expert.  Here she is hard at work... oh, and Luke also makes an appearance. 

Luke had a go at roasting marshmallows... 

...but for the most part, he was more interested in eating the finished product.

Leo also expressed more interest in the food than the fire. 

In the end, we all had a great time. 

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Something most people probably don't know about Cleveland is that we have a national park in our midst.  In fact, we can get to it within 15 minutes of where we live!  A couple weeks ago, we went there to have a picnic.  Warning: many pictures to follow...

Here are the boys at the entrance to the trail we went on.

Luke was pretty into it, running ahead of us as we tried to keep up with him.

We got someone to take a family picture of the four of us. 

We didn't end up walking very far at all before we found a good spot for our picnic. 

Besides eating, Luke spent most of his time throwing rocks into the water. 

Leo came along, too, of course, and enjoyed trying to stick all kinds of things into his mouth. 

When it was time to head home for naps, Luke predictably didn't want to leave.  If you look closely, you can see him standing defiantly in the distance. 

One Big Staycation

Since moving here to Cleveland at the beginning of August, we've felt like we're on one big staycation. I don't start work until October, so we've been taking advantage of this time to spend a lot of time together as a family discovering our new city. A lot of people trash Cleveland, but it's been great so far with lots to do (of course, we'll just have to wait and see how the winter goes!).

Here is a bit of a sampling...

We've tried out a few parks and found one in particular close to home that we really like.  Unlike Luke, Leo just loves the swing...

I think I mentioned this before, but my mom got us a zoo membership as a gift, and we've already paid it off by going four times this past month!

We also got a membership to the natural history museum, aka the "dinosaur museum."  The fact that Luke threw a big tantrum when we had to leave settled it that he would love going back there. 

Courtney went with a friend and took Luke raspberry picking at a place just 15 minutes or so from where we live...

We went and had lunch in Little Italy a few weeks ago.  It was really good... and cheap!  No pictures, but a good time was had by all. 

We've also been on quite the garage sale rampage, too.  I don't think a week has gone by where we haven't gone to a few.  

The public library has been great, too, and is definitely an upgrade from what we had back in C'ville.    

One of the coolest things we've done so far, though, is to visit the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is only 15 minutes from where we live.  We took a lot of pictures there today, so I'll save that for another post. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but we're certainly having a fun staycation!

Around the House

I just loaded more pictures on the computer and realized that we have so many that I can just devote a whole post to what we've been doing around the house. I'll have to wait to get to our travels around Cleveland.

I've said it already, but we really like the house we're renting, particularly the big yard and the extra space we have inside compared to the apartment we came from.

We've spent many nights after dinner either going for a walk or hanging out in the backyard (chalk and the big trampoline left by the owners have been the main attractions). 

Here's Luke and Leo riding together in the wagon, with Leo sporting his pre-haircut look:

Luke and Leo have started interacting more together, which has been a lot of fun.  One thing Luke likes to do is push Leo's stroller on walks:

They're also playing more together inside, though this has often required Luke to exercise a bit more patience than he would sometimes like.  For the most part, though, they get along well and Luke can be really sweet with Leo:

Leo does great at mealtime and pretty much eats anything we give him.  Cheerios are a breakfast favorite:

We decided to subscribe to the local paper, and it's been great getting to know the city better in that way.  We also introduced Luke to the "funnies":

And finally, we'll wrap this up with a couple random pictures, one of Leo on the day he turned 10 months and then Luke being Luke: