love those 70's

70 degrees fahrenheit that is. now that its not scorching hot outside scott and i have been able to get out and do some fun things during the day. i thought this picture was hilarious. we shared a piece of pizza from a little kiosk in the middle of our outdoor mall. i coudln't believe that it was bigger than his face! (scott was obviously stoked about it.)

we've been spending some more time on our lawn outside our house. i like to lay on the blanket while scott runs around and plays. but he usually ends up tackling me before too long. we also found this really cool splash pad that a friend told us about. i know i post a lot of pictures of scott at splash pads but if you could see how happy this kid is when he's running around in the splashing water you would take a lot of pictures too.

and (drum roll please) scott has made ANOTHER friend!!! This is his friend Mitchell. They are almost the same age and they play so well together. His family invited us all to go to the zoo with them on Labor Day and we had a blast.

this is us with the mitch and his mom and dad (nick and sarah).

and this is just a fun pic of scott and mitch sticking their heads through our staircase when they came over for dinner the other day. this is crystal and derek. they are some other friends we've been hanging out with lately. they took us to this cool beach at Wallace Lake. we feel lucky to know such great people.

and last but DEFINITELY not least. here is our cute little boy reciting his abc's. you may think i'm bragging but for any of you who know scott and how he is slightly behind in talking you will be very impressed.

never bored!

life in ohio has really started to get exciting now that we actually know where things are. it turns out that cleveland has a TON to do and it is really nearly impossible to ever get bored.
james is doing his rotations now days so scott and i have had to figure out how to entertain ourselves without him.
scott LOVES water so we try to hit up any type of FREE H2O whenever we can. the beach on lake erie is one of our favorite. and how can we not go as often as we can when we live so close to it!?

when daddy is around we try to do fun stuff with him as well. this is our FHE last week at the local swimming pool.
and of course we had to hit up the county fair. i'm not going to lie, it paled in comparison to the iowa state fair, but there was this juggler guy that juggled chain saws and rode on his tall bike while juggling fire that scott was absolutely mesmerized by.

scott's getting slightly easier at restaurants these days but we have a goal to (as much as possible) only go to local restaurants that are only in cleveland. so far we've had some delicious local italian, mexican and the best gyro i've ever had!

scott is finally starting to make some friends. this is his cute friend thomas. scott gets a little confused when i tell him that thomas is coming over though. he tends to run around saying, "Train!" (as in thomas the train...)

one of our favorite findings in cleveland is the emerald necklace. the emerald necklace consists of a bunch of reservations or metro parks in the area that have walking paths, play grounds, lakes and nature centers in the middle of vast forests of trees. this is a picture of scott last saturday when we went to the nature center at rocky river reservation.

and of course we still have hours of down time at home where scott gets to run around in his underwear and superman pajamas and play with his animals! (he's not supposed to play with them on the lap top but i came in from the kitchen this morning and found them ALL lined up where? on the lap top. and what do i do? encourage him by taking a picture. i'm a great mom.)

another random tid bit about scot these days is that he really really loves mom's crocks. like he LOVES them and wants to walk from the house to the car with them every chance he gets and then he likes to wear them in the car and then he gets mad when he can't wear them all day. i forgot they were in the car one day and i opened the door to find that he had somehow reached them and put them on his feet. it was hilarious. you had to be there...

okay, i know i have a lot of scott pics but these are his new pajamas that grandy keyser sent him in the mail the other day. they are his "airplane" pajamas and he can't get enough of them. thanks grandy!

another clip of him in his pj's. he's too cute.

and last but definitely not least it was mine and james' 4 year wedding aniversary last week and james brought me home not 1, not a dozen, not even 2 dozen but 25 red roses! kind of a random number but i loved them!

grandma came to visit!

the best part about living far away is having family come to visit. james' mom "grandma palmer" came to visit us last week and we had a blast!

scott LOVED having a pal to hang out with while driving around. grandma palmer knew just how to entertain him. in this particular instance she used scott's socks to make hand puppets. he thought it was the coolest.

one night we took grandma to Friendly's to get icecream. does scott look happy to anyone else? just a little.

another day we took a ferry boat ride out to Kelley's Island.

we rented a golf cart and explored the island for a couple hours.

then we had lunch at the beach.

here's a picture of us in front of the island (not sure what position i'm trying to pull there.)

it got kind of hot so we poured water on scott's head. i loved his wild hair.

one of scott's favorite things was when grandma took us all to see Toy Story 3. This was scott's first time going to see a movie in a real live movie theater. grandma bought him popcorn and candy and a drink. he was in seventh heaven. and mom and dad were so proud of him for sitting quietly through the whole movie (almost).

on friday night we went down to columbus to hang out with the bryan and annie fam. we slept over friday night and grandma was a hit with story time.

the next day we went to the columbus zoo (which annie boasts as the best zoo in the USA) it really was a very cool zoo.
the baby elephant...
scott LOVES his uncle bryan.
we were so sad when we had to leave. these little kiddlings are so cute together.

thanks for coming to visit grandma palmer! can't wait until next time!

saying goodbye to iowa / moving / getting settled in clevland

this is the sad little face that scott made when we told him we had to move away from iowa. okay, he really doesn't understand what's going on. but he's definitely going to miss all his friends in des moines. we all are. a huge part of mine and scott's daily routine was going to the ymca where i exercised and worked in the child watch. (i could take scott with me so it was perfect) This is a picture of our good friend Deborah who worked at the cafe there. She always talked to us and gave us free food and played with scott. we are going to miss her so much. i don't have pics of the other people i worked with but i'm going to miss all of them too.

shayla fursov (one of my closest friends) brought her kids over for one last play date. scott still asks for her son isaac. it breaks my heart.

we also had one last play date with our good friend ryan callahan. he came to the pool with us. as you can see the boys (who had spent the whole summer studying up to this point) really needed some time in the sun. :)

and of course we had to have one more picnic with the tory family.

then it was time for the big move. we had so many guys come and help us move. it was slick!

thanks boys!

then we were off on our adventure to ohio. we made a few stops on the way. first we stopped in chicago. (james was so nervous about me leaning out the window to take this picture. he really thought i was going to get mugged or something. on a crowded freeway in the middle of the day? really james?)

then we went to columbus where we met up with some long lost frends. the jonses and the other palmers (james' brother bryan and his wife annie). we went to the "bunny" fountains and had a blast!

we feel so lucky that we only live a couple hourse away from these guys.

we finally made it to cleveland and are getting settled in our condo. i don't have pics of the new digs yet since its not quite finished but we were finally able to get scott his birthday present (a few months late). it's a new tricycle! and he is getting so good at it!

since james doesn't start his rotations for a while we have had a few weeks to become aquainted with cleveland. first we took scott to the zoo. scott's been a little isolated from other kids since we moved here so i'm not sure if he's more facinated by the monkey in this picture or the little boy standing next to him.

this was the coolest. the gorillas were SO close to the glass!

we also took scott to the beach. it's on lake erie and its only about ten minutes away from our house! so fun!

and then of course, when we heard there was a circus in town we had to hop on that too. scott did such a good job for the first half hour when the animals were out. he didn't love the random girls dancing inside the ring.

during intermission we took him on the train. which of course... he loved.

and most recently we all went to visit kirtland, ohio. we did (part of) the tour and went to a play. it was all really fun.

we can't wait until we have lots of visitors (hint hint) that we can take to all these cool places! :)