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! :)

he's officially 2!

i feel so terrible that i didn't make a post about scott's second birthday that was almost a month ago! but we got his 2 year pictures the other day so here is the official post a bit late...
my good friend christia palizzi was nice enough to take the pictures for me last week. i think they turned out SO cute! christia had her two little boys there with us and scott was in heaven running around the playground with them. i love that these pictures are all so natural of what he really and truly looks like day to day when he's running around and playing like his cute little self.

this one is funny because as we were leaving there were some boys playing frizbee-golf (frolf) and scott stole one of their frisbees. this is scott's classic face when i'm telling him to "give it back" and he really really doesn't want to.

even though james has been studying like crazy for his board exams (that are in just over a week!) we have found a little time to have some final iowa moments before the big move. last week we went to the iowa cubs baseball game. (okay, we actually left at the beginning of the first inning because it started pouring rain) but we were there long enough to have a hot dog and popcorn and listen to the national anthem and get the general idea of the experience. it was a lot of fun! another fun thing is the local swimming pool. we went there with our friends shalise and brooklynn kearns - brooklynn was the only one lucky enough (or calm enough) to get her picture taken.

and just a couple days ago we went to Blank Park Zoo with our friends Stephanie and Jack. We even rode the train (though Scott was a slightly bothered that he couldn't DRIVE the train.)

you can't see it too well but these boys are covered in water and dirt. scott likes the zoo but he LOVES the zoo when he has a buddy along.

and naturally he had to give the giant penguin a five before we left. because what would the zoo be without a giant penguin?

the best part about a thunderstorm...

...is playing in the mud the next day(scott with his good buddy isaac.)

bye bye brody

this is such a sad little post because brody and his mom & dad are moving to columbus ohio in a few days. we will be moving to cleveland (two hours north of columbus) in a month so we'll still be able to see each other. but this may be the last time they'll ever be a 30 second walk away from our front door. so we are trying to get as many shots of them (and us) as we can before they move. this was taken at our last sunday dinner together at ryan callahan's house. they LOVED playing together on his huge bean bag chair.

and here we all are... one last time (sniff): ryan, b.j., brody, anne, james, me & scotton a funnier note - scott and i got to have brody over to play for a while today so i got some footage of scott feeding brody (and himself of course) chocolate pudding.

and this is what brody looked like after the feeding.here's our boys with their "uncle" ryan. we always knew that scott & brody must be related somehow.
these last pictures don't have anything to do with the jones's leaving but they are still cute. this was when scott and i had our own mommy/son beach day at raccoon river park.and this is the day that scott played with two of his other friends (ethan and isaac fursov). they were having so much fun with their trucks in our backyard. and can i just throw the question out of how many apartment complexes do you know of that provide THIS much GRASS in the backyard? we seriously lucked out!
could someone please explain to scott that this isn't a bike?