Arkansas Trip

And we're back... A lot has happened in the past month, it's been an exciting time! 

One of the last big things we did before I started work was to take a road trip to Arkansas to visit family.  I have to admit that we faced the travelling with a bit of trepidation, as this would be by far the longest trip in the car that the boys had taken.  We broke it up over two days and it ended up taking about 16 hours one-way.  To our pleasant surprise, Luke and Leo did great in the car, helped by the box of new toys we got from the dollar store and 17 DVDs from the public library (!). 

We had a great time down there. The boys got to see Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandma, Aunt Kari, (soon-to-be) Uncle Mark, Great Aunt Lyn, Great Aunt Nancy, and Great Uncle Bob.  Luke and Leo did a great job of entertaining everyone and providing some excuses to go shopping. I also got in a few rounds of golf.

My parents took a bunch of pictures.  For whatever reason, we got a lot more good ones of Leo, probably because Luke was just constantly on the move, trying to impress people by jumping off the couch into a pile of pillows and doing other fun around the house games he invented there.

We had a Halloween/Birthday Party as well:

Leo had a cookie to celebrate his upcoming first birthday:

He also got a few presents:

But don't worry, Luke wasn't left out.  He got some gifts as well, but the biggest hit of the evening was a Halloween stamp set.  I think most of the ink ended up on his body by the end of the night!

The boys also enjoyed a trip to the beach along the lake:

I'm really glad we were able to make the trip.  It was especially nice for Great-Grandma and the boys to spend that time together, they really took to her well:

First Day of Preschool

Luke had his first day of preschool yesterday!  It's nothing too intense, just 1.5 hours a week with a co-op of several other moms that Courtney knows.  They all take turns hosting and teaching.  In any event, it was certainly enough to justify taking "first day of school" pictures... so here he is!

And we're back!

October has just flown by, perhaps as evidenced by the lack of blog posts.  We were out of town for the past week and a half visiting family down in Arkansas.  More on that later.  Things are about to change quite a bit around here as I will be starting work this Monday.  We also find out the bar exam results next Friday!  For now, I'll try and catch up on some of what we've been doing... 

At the end of September we went down to Columbus for the day to visit the temple and the COSI museum.  With our natural history museum membership, we were able to get in free to COSI, which is a children's science center.  We didn't have too much time, but of what we did see, the boys enjoyed the water play area the most. 

The fall season is in full force up here in Cleveland.  We've got tons of leaves on the ground in our backyard and it's getting quite a bit cooler.  Here's Courtney and Luke putting some of those leaves and sticks to good use (with a special appearance by Leo). 

There's more to catch up on, but I don't want to go into picture-overload mode.  I'll end with a few more good ones of the boys.  The last one catches them in the midst of playing Elefun.   

More to come!

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!