H - A - "double L" - O - W - "double E" - N 2008

Happy Halloween! This year Josh dressed up as Superman. He had a party at daycare where all of the kids (all ages) paraded to show off their costumes and then we all sat down for lots of juice and goodies. Since Josh is still so young (20 months) and isn't allowed to eat candy we decided not to go trick-or-treating this year. Besides that, the city we live in restricts trick-or-treating to only between 6-7:30pm and since we live on a busy street without sidewalks we would have to drive a bit down the road to get to a neighborhood with sidewalks. All signs pointed to us staying home so we did and took the opportunity to carve our pumpkins. Three pumpkins, one for each of us. I did a simple smiley face for Josh's, the Boston Red Sox logo for Scott, and a frightened face for mine. I'm very happy with the results!

A beautiful fall day

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day... high in the upper 50's and sunny all afternoon. While Scott unloaded the second Uhaul, Josh helped me rake up the leaves and then we all got to play in them. Just a few photos from all the fun and the porch decorated for Halloween.

This morning we had snow flurries, just a little bit and only for around 5 minutes but it was still snow. Scott was excited, I was sad (it's too early for snow), and Josh was just plain confused why we were staring out the window.

Pop Go the Wiggles

This afternoon I took Josh to go see the Wiggles concert here in downtown Cleveland. Earlier this week I found floor seats (9 rows from the stage) for half price!
I was nervous that Josh was too young or wouldn't want to pay attention for that long. But to my surprise we BOTH had a fantastic time! Josh, being the quiet reserved little boy that he can be, didn't want to leave my side and go dance with the other kids. So instead he bopped along on my lap and we sang and danced together.
They did our favorites "Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car", "Fruit Salad", "Rockabye Your Bear", and "The Monkey Dance". Josh LOVED when Wags the dog, Henry the octopus and Dorothy the dinosaur came on stage... he kept pointing and saying "ooo, ooo, dog".
One hour and 45 minutes later we were happy and all "Wiggled" out and headed home. Don't you know that he STILL wanted to watch an episode of the Wiggles Show on tv before bed? Such a creature of habit...

Our first trip to the zoo

Yesterday we took our first trip to the Cleveland zoo. What an awesome place! They have so many different animals (surprising for a zoo in Ohio) and we had a fantastic time.

The zoo was all decorated for Halloween... they have an event on the weekend evenings this month called "Boo at the Zoo" that we will attend next year when Josh is a little older and can participate in all the activities. So for this visit we just checked out the animals.

Josh loved the monkeys and the camels... Scott loved the snow leopards and I loved the gibbon monkeys. We can't wait to go back when the weather gets warmer!

Toot Toot Chugga Chugga

Toot toot chugga chugga big red car...

Josh loves the Wiggles. I mean really LOVES the Wiggles. If he could he would watch them all day every day but I limit it to one episode in the morning before school and one or two at night before bed. I'm in the process of DVRing every episode so that we have a variety to choose from every day because Josh can watch the same episode over and over again but Scott and I are ready to wear earplugs.

I went to Toys R Us today to get some ideas for Christmas and ended up buying the toy in this picture. It's very cute, plays 2 songs, and Josh immediately loved it. Now we get to listen to "Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car" even when they're not on the TV. :)

Here we are!

So this isn't my first time blogging... I had one on MySpace but figured this was a better site to use so all of our family and friends can keep up with how we're doing. But anyway...

Here we are in North Ridgeville, 20-25 minutes west of Cleveland. It's a small suburb, a little on the rural side (we have a horse farm up the road from us) but being somewhere more rural is nothing new to us as we lived in the boonies in Jax. This is only a rental though and we are in the process of finding a house to buy.

Josh is adjusting well. It was a rough first week but he's settled into his routine now and likes his new daycare. He LOVES playing outside in the yard and taking in all the comfortable fall weather. We've gone to two fall festivals so far and Josh points out pumpkins everywhere we go.

Scott likes his job as a PSS rep so far. He's used to sales so it's just a matter of learning more and more about medical products and devices which he does daily. I'm glad that I can help him since I've been with the company for 7+ years and have a very basic knowledge of our products.

As for me, I'm still working for PSS for the time being. I work from my kitchen table on my laptop after I take Josh to daycare. Some people would say that it sounds great but I'm too social of a person to enjoy the solitude and I crave to be in an office again. I only have about one more month before it's time for me to train my replacement so I am on the job hunt. There seems to be plenty of jobs here in the Cleveland area so it's just a matter of finding the one that fits.

So that's it for now. Not sure how often I'll update this but I will try to blog once or twice a week!