Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Circle S Farms











Okay, even though this happened a week ago, we had so much fun that I thought I should share! Last Wednesday, Erik, Malachi and I went to Circle S Farms in Grove City. They have a barn full of hay to play in (complete with a slide), a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch where Malachi chose his very own pumpkin to take home, some animals to see and pet, lots of places great for photos, a corn maze and a sunflower maze, and Malachi's favorite...the Scarecrow Cave. The Scarecrow Cave is really just a maze of hay bales stacked up with some fencing on top to close them in. We had a great time and will probably make a trip to Circle S an annual fall tradition!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

To Get Rid of Hiccups...

This past weekend Bainbridge celebrated the 41st annual Fall Festival of Leaves. Malachi was lucky enough to hang out with his Aunt Megan all weekend because I had to help out in the store. Now, according to Malachi (who got his information from Aunt Meg), the cure for hiccups is to eat cotton candy. Needless to say, he has a new favorite food (if you can classify cotton candy as food), a new favorite ride (the Dizzy Dragon) and a new favorite thing about living in Bainbridge (the festival).

We had a busy weekend at the store and a great visit with Aunt Meg. Tomorrow morning we'll be glad to drive through Bainbridge without detouring around the rides and food stands!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Photoshoot at the Falls

These are a few pictures from Malachi's second annual photoshoot at the falls (up Falls Road from our house). This has always been a favorite place of my family's for special photos, and I am lucky enough to have a sister who's a photographer and gives a great family discount! Kelsey did a great job, in spite of Malachi getting muddy and me falling while carrying him and bumping his head on a rock on the way down.

These are a few pictures I liked, but not my favorites...I'm saving those for gifts and Christmas cards!


Saturday, October 11, 2008

Kindermusik

Malachi has been taking Kindermusik class with Miss Kelly (Stauffer) at the Racquet Club in Chillicothe this Fall. He really likes the "School House" where he can experiment with crafts and play with various toys. October's theme is centered around creativity and construction.

He made a robot during craft time this week. He loves the singing and the games during class, too. He especially liked the "magic blanket" this week.

We also took a field trip last Friday to a pumpkin patch.
Malachi spent most of his time playing hide-and-seek, although he did stop long enough to pose for a few pictures.
Heather and I tried our hardest to get a cute picture of Malachi and Corinne, but this is the best I managed. It's really difficult to get two kids to cooperate and smile at the same time!

Our Bodacious Beads!

Here they are! Our bead creations!
In the picture above, clockwise from top are Mom's, Erin's, Megan's, Kimberly's and Kelsey's beads.
Mom's beads
Erin's beads
Megan's beads
Kimberly's beads
Kelsey's beads

Great job, girls!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Happy Birthday, One Last Time

Well, anyone who knows Megan knows that she likes to celebrate her birthday as long as possible. So, this year we did stretch it out for a whole weekend, and I must say we had an absolute blast. The grand finale of our trip was a visit to the Pittsburgh Glass Center and a two hour hands-on workshop creating our very own glass beads. The instructor began by saying that working with glass is addictive, and I must agree. I want to go back and make more!


Kelsey picked up our beads this week and said that some of them are really good. According to her, Mom's creations are the best! I'll post a couple pictures when I can.

Meg, I'm so glad we were able to celebrate you all weekend. I had a great time and hope that we can make "birthday trips" an annual Lloyd Girls tradition!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Happy Birthday, Part 2

"If anyone asks, I'm 27!" -Megan's motto of the day.

We woke up bright and early Saturday morning in order to eat breakfast at Pamela's Diner. Pamela's has quickly become a favorite for all those related to Kelsey and who have visited her in Pittsburgh.

Just by chance, Megan's friends Anna and Lloyd were in Pittsburgh last weekend for a wedding, so they joined us for breakfast. I think they enjoyed their omelets as much as Mom, Kelsey, Kim and I enjoyed our pancakes!

After breakfast, Kelsey had do an interview for school so the rest of us went to do a little shopping in the Strip District. Mom especially loves the Strip because she says it makes her think she's in a different country.

By this time, Kelsey was finished with her work so we met up with her and headed to IKEA...one of the highlights of my trip! As we were walking in, Kim noticed a hole in Megan's shirt. Instead of going in to begin hours of shopping, we had to head across the street to buy Megan a new shirt!

With Megan in a new shirt, we finally made it to IKEA. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. A great girls' day!

Next we went back to Station Square for dinner at The Melting Pot. Yum!! We were all really excited because this restaurant is a treat not often afforded by any of us. Everything was delicious and we finished just in time to find a place to watch the fireworks.

A huge fireworks show was planned for Pittsburgh's 250th birthday. We found a good place to view the show not far from our car and we even commented on the crowds not being as bad as we thought they might have been.

The show was great. I would even say that it rivaled the shows I saw in Spain during all their fiestas. After the show we got to the car and Mom showed off her maneuverability skills by turning the car around in the width of two parking spots with a line of traffic behind us. We felt a little like the car in the Austin Powers movie, but luckily we didn't get stuck! After turning around we sat completely still for an hour and a half! We didn't even move far enough to get into the line of cars trying to leave! To make things a little worse, after about 45 minutes the gas light came on indicating we were low!

Meg was completely freaking out saying that she refused to push the car on her birthday, but Mom gently reassured her it wouldn't be her birthday anymore by the time we could move! Mom was right, but thankfully we didn't need to push. We finally decided to cut through the line and go out the entrance on the other side of the parking lot. We made it out to a side street and then ramped the grassy median in order to get out to the main road.

After about two and a half hours we pulled in to a gas station on Kelsey's block. Mom then dropped us off in front of Kelsey's house and we watched as she sped off in reverse to park on Kelsey's one-way street.

By the way, Megan was born on October 4, 1980. You do the math!

Read on in the next couple days to find out about the last surprise of Meg's weekend!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Happy Birthday, Part 1

This past weekend Mom, Kimberly and I whisked Megan off for a weekend full of surprises in Pittsburgh. Meg's birthday was on Saturday. She was kind of struggling with adding another year to her age, so we tried to convince her that age is just a number. Pittsburgh was happy to hear this since it was celebrating a birthday last weekend, too...its 250th!

We started out on Friday morning, leaving Bainbridge at 8:30. After a few pit stops (gas, dropping off Malachi, etc.) we picked Meg and Kim up in Grove City. As we got on the highway Mom suddenly realized that a trip to the bank was in order before we went much farther because she had forgotten to bring any money! We finally left Columbus (after another pit stop for brunch) at about noon.

We made it safely to Pittsburgh by mid-afternoon and met Kelsey at her house. Our first "appointment" (everything was a surprise to Meg, so we referred to all our plans as "appointments") wasn't until 6, so we decided a little snack would be nice. We went down to Station Square and had a couple of appetizers at Bar Louie before our first appointment...a Ducky Tour!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, a Ducky Tour is a land-to-water tour of the city on a bus-turned-boat. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently many other cities have similar tours. I would highly recommend taking a Ducky Tour if you are ever in Pittsburgh. It was a lot of fun and very informative.

Meg even got to drive the boat since she was celebrating a birthday. The tour guides gave her a really hard time about being such a terrible driver, although I think she did a pretty good job. She didn't wreck us anyway!

After the tour, we headed downtown to the cultural district to a gallery crawl. We saw some interesting art and a dance demonstration, but the highlight for me was the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. They had an ice sculpture and some cakes on display and were offering $1 samples of various dishes. My favorite was Chicken Paprikash and now I need to find a recipe to try it myself.

Since the appetizers and $1 samples were basically all we had for dinner, we decided we needed a little dessert. We went back over to Station Square to Buca di Beppo's for some bruschetta and a delicious chocolate-caramel cake. Meg has been teasing me ever since that this baby is craving caramel!

By the time we finished dessert, it was about 11:00 and we were getting a little tired. We went back to Kelsey's and visited with her roommates just long enough not to be rude before crashing for the night. We all (except Meg) knew that another busy day was ahead of us and our beauty sleep was important!

To be continued...

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Watch out, Annie!

Annie Sikora came all the way from Albuquerque to visit Malachi on Tuesday morning. Her mommy, Heather, and I have been friends since I was born. We grew up together and it is really fun to see our kids playing together now.

One thing I learned from Annie's visit is that we really need to work on teaching Malachi to be gentle with other kids. While Annie was sitting in the grass playing happily, Malachi came charging at her full speed and tackled her from behind! Thank goodness Heather is a very relaxed and laid-back mom! Sorry Annie if there were any bruises from the incident!