Inside, outside, under, over-on-top-of

Annie's favorite show is Sesame Street. And on SS they cover concepts like inside/outside and under/over. So I thought today I'd put together some photos of Annie in various states. She loves going inside cabinets. She will go all the way under any bed or crib if she thinks there could be a pacificer lurking somewhere under there. And even though she started out hating grass, she's come a long way and now loves being outdoors. We pretty much always try and take her outside on the weekends, unless the wind chill has made it pretty unbearable.

We've had a couple of great snow storms so far this winter. The nice part about snow in the city is that it usually doesn't stick around too long. The last storm was New Year's weekend, and we were in Ohio so we missed it. Annie is undecided about the snow, but is giving it a chance. I'll let you know when she returns a verdict.

Paranormal Activity...

... Karen's no longer allowed to watch scary movies.

So last Saturday night we rented this movie. Karen has been dying to see this movie, and has tried numerous times in the past few weeks to watch it. First she tried to download it and watch it on the flight to Ohio, but it wasn't available for rent, only to buy, then she tried to watch it on demand, but it wasn't available... So finally she went old school and drove to Blockbuster. It's been so long that we physically rented a movie that the address for me that was on file was my Gordon College address, 8 years ago.

Without trying to ruin this movie... It's about this couple dealing with a haunting/ghost/paranormal activity. It's about 90 minutes. I made it through the first hour, then fell asleep. I awoke to Karen screaming and clutching my leg on the couch. She was very freaked out. We decided that we couldn't go straight to bed, so we thought an Intervention would make us feel better and help us forget about the movie. I was mildly freaked out, but not too bad. We made it halfway through the Intervention when the on demand crapped out and we had to stop watching it, so we went to bed. I fell asleep pretty easy, but I think it took Karen a while. But what I do remember... it was some point in the middle of the night and I heard something, and looked up to see something running from the bathroom towards the bed. I may have yelled. Then Karen yelled. We both scared the crap out of each other.

Me: why are you running!

Karen: I'm scared, stop yelling!

Karen was running out of the bathroom and back into bed. It's like 10-15 feet by the time you make it around the bed... Then it took some time for us to fall back to sleep, and Bananas woke us up right at 6... which we were both pretty stoked to see that it was daylight out. I'd like to say we learned something, like maybe to stop watching scary movies, or how about not running from the bathroom back to bed, but I doubt it.

Two birds, one stone

While we were in Ohio, we got to see Larry, Alex and Bea. They drove up from Dayton for the day, and we all met at the COSI center (the science center, not the sandwich place). http://www.cosi.org/

Annie and Bea had so much fun playing together. There is this huge child activity center where there's all these great places for them to play, and a big water part play area. We put Annie and Bea in raincoats and let them loose! Annie kept putting every toy in her mouth, which got a little gross after a while considering all the kids running around in there, but what can you do? We had a great time and it was nice to see everyone!

Ohio!

For New Year's we headed out to Ohio and to visit our friends, the Kessels. They moved to Columbus over the summer, and we haven't seen them since they left.

Annie continues to be a pretty resilent traveller. The original plan was we were to fly out of Logan New Year's eve on a 3 o'clock flight, arrive in Columbus at 5 and start cooking a big meal at 6. Only it started snowing pretty heavily in Boston starting around noon, which caused the plane we were supposed to take to Columbus to be unable to land, and it was diverted to Hartford, yada yada yada. Once it landed in Hartford they had to refuel, get cleared for takeoff, land in Boston, and repeat the process before we could takeoff... Finally our plane left at about 6:30pm. Somehow Annie was able to keep it together the whole time in the airport. She made lots of friends in the terminal, and luckily we were in terminal A and there's a great kids play area so she spent a lot of time in there as well.

We were very grateful to finally make it into Columbus and we had a great time! Annie and Mason picked up where they left off and had so much fun playing together! I think their favorite activity was to ride around together in the wagon. They would have stayed in there for hours if only someone would have kept pulling them around, and around, and around... Coincidentally enough, the whole time we were in Columbus it snowed there too! It was a nice light snow that made everything pretty pleasant. We took Annie for a long walk on the golf course and pulled her behind in a sled. She loved that. I have some video that I'll try to add later.

Of course we ate out a bunch... and we had some great meals! For dinner we had fondue, at the Melting Pot. First you have a cheese course, then a meat course in either broth or oil (we picked broth) and then you have the chocolate course... which was phenomenal. There's also some pretty good Italian restaurants in Columbus and this great bistro, Bon Vie. I think the bistro was my favorite, although the Italian place was pretty sweet too. We got to spend a total of about 5 days in Ohio, and it was such a great time and so much fun to be able to see the Kessels for so long. It felt just like they still lived down the street from us in Charlestown!

Happy Christmas!

This year we spent Christmas in upstate NY. We left on the Wednesday before Christmas and had a very pleasant drive. It normally takes about five hours to get there, and the minute we hit the Berkshires it snowed the whole way home! Luckily it was a light snow, and not the normal snow that begins accumulating right away and you have to drive 35 mph and can only see five feet in front of you. Annie is still a pretty great rider. During the whole five hour trip she maybe got a bit ornery for a total of ten minutes?

We were in NY for five non-stop days of food, family and friends. Annie had a great time and Christmas is becoming a lot of fun for her! This year she got a ton of presents, mainly because we didn't get much for her last year. She really liked unwrapping presents and playing with her new toys. I think the biggest hit was the Rody. That's the red donkey/burro-ish toy she's riding.

Annie always plays on it at this store we go to, so we tracked one down for her and gave it to her for Christmas. I thought I was being good by also buying an air pump too to make sure we had a way to blow it up after she unwrapped it. After messing around with for about 20 minutes, I couldn't figure out why the pump seemed to be the wrong size and none of the different sized needles fit. So annoyed. Karen to the rescue. After about 30 seconds she figured out what the problem was and had the Rody blown up in now time. Everybody loved it, and the best part is that the weight limit is 400 lbs! I know, a bit unbelieveable. But there were some people who tried it out and it survived! Now that it's at home, in addition to riding it, Annie has found another purpose for it. Stepping stool. She picks up or drags the Rody where she wants to go, and then pushes it on its side and then uses it to help her reach hard to reach places! Great for her, not so great for us.

Annie also had her first haircut right before Christmas. Her hair is getting pretty curly, which is a big part of the reason she hasn't gotten a haircut sooner, because she had a mullet. But since the back of her was so curly you couldn't really tell that the back was so much longer than the rest, but it was starting to get noticeable so Karen took care of it.