Sunday, July 20, 2008

More Pix!




I've loved having Thayne around the last few weeks. It's been so much fun to play and spend all day with the love of my life. We've had some funny experiences lately.

Friday night we went to the Palmyra pageant. We were so busy getting Tyson ready and the car packed that we didn't notice we were wearing the same shirt. We noticed when we were about 5 minutes from home. When we got there we noticed a lot of other groups wearing matching shirts. Granted, most of them were about 12 years old.




Buffalo has a lot of fairs and festivals. Usually we don't participate but I really wanted to go to Taste of Buffalo this year. This event consists of restaurants in Buffalo setting up tents in downtown Buffalo. You buy tickets and then go along the street for a couple of blocks and can sample the food. We were slightly disappointed for a couple of reasons. One, most of the food was overpriced. We'd buy $4 of tickets and get a tiny bowl of food. Come on! I can get more food at a restaurant for that price. Thayne and I used to go to Taste of Provo when we lived in Utah. Students could get in for $5. Then you would sample 10 restaurants in two days. So each restaurant was $.50! We went to the first restaurant and get chips, salsa, drink, and a fajita. The second had a buffet. By that time we were full. So we would go to the next couple of restaurants and they would give us food to take home. We were able to eat for 6 meals on the food from Taste of Provo. Sadly, when we got home from Taste of Buffalo we were still hungry. :( The second thing that was disappointing was that it rained on us the whole time.
We parked at the church so that we didn't have to pay for parking. We thought the exercise would do us good (It's over a mile to walk downtown). When we got about half way downtown, it started pouring! I was starving so we kept going. When we arrived at the ticket tent they had stopped selling tickets because of the rain. After a few minutes they opened back up and we were able to purchase tickets but it was still raining and we were worried about Tyson so we hurried and bought food and headed back to the church. Tyson however was quite the trooper. He was soaking wet by the time we got back to the car but never whimpered or whined. I love my baby! Downtown Buffalo has some beautiful architecture. It's so different than the West but it's pretty awesome.

Alegany State Park

We drove south about an hour and a half with the Tanners to Alegany State Park. It was gorgeous there! And if you want a good time, take the Tanners along (or have them take you along). We started off by going on a nature trail hike which we thought was going to be easy going for a couple of miles. Well, we should have realized from the overgrown start of the trail that it wasn't going to get better, but we weren't intimidated. Nick showed the real pioneer within him and pushed his daughters in a stroller over roots and rocks, through mud and under/around/over fallen trees. I'm surprised that his daughters did so well with the off-roading because they were going on one or two wheels for half of the trip and airborne for another part of the trip. Sarah wouldn't be shown up by Nick, so she showed her pioneer spirit by hiking the treacherous trail while being pregnant.

I carried Tyson in a baby carrier, which was great until he decided to blow through his diaper. The following picture is after an initial wiping off, so it doesn't show the true extent of the blow out.

With his weight all on his bum, there wasn't any space in his diaper for his poo, so it went down his leg and onto unsuspecting daddy. Yuck! Having failed our hiking/emergency preparedness lessons, we didn't have any diapers, wipes or clothes with us on the hike. So we're in the middle of the forest with muck flowing from my baby onto me. Great. All we could do was wait until we finished the hike and clean us both off. Tyson didn't seem to mind. He just fell asleep in the baby carrier for the second half of the trip.

We then went swimming in the lake and had fun on a paddle boat. It really was a beautiful area and I recommend it to people looking for a good time.

P.S. This is the second year in a row that we went with the Tanners on an outing where we went swimming at a beach/lake. My vote is that we keep the tradition alive and go to Hawaii next summer.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Our Wicked 4th of July

For Mother's Day/new baby present Thayne got me tickets to Wicked. It was amazing!! We'd listened to the music a lot and loved it. I'd wanted to take Thayne to a Broadway for a long time.
The Bad: When Thayne reserved the tickets he thought we were in the front row of the balcony seats. However, he had the balcony backwards so we were in the very, very back!
The Good: The costumes, music, acting, story line and everything else.
Thanks Natalie D. for watching Tyson!

We went to the Cheektowaga town park for fireworks on the 4th. They were awesome! I think there were about 5 or 6 finales. It was commented that the only fireworks that anybody had seen that were better were in Washington D.C. The order of best fireworks ever goes like this #1: the nation's capitol, #2 Cheetktowaga town park.
I was a little worried about Tyson since I watched Mr. Holland's Opus lately and he slept through the whole thing. However, Thayne has assured me that Tyson is not deaf.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Trip to Maryland



Thayne, Tyson, and I went to Maryland this week and had a great time. We visited Thayne's family, my sister and her husband, and survived a lot of hours in the car. Some of our favorite things this week were swimming, playing the Wii, going to the Orioles game, teaching Tyson new tricks in the car, listening to a book on CD while driving, dressing up in Trev's clothes, playing lazer tag, playing board games, winning at Risk, hanging out with family, and eating good food. Here's pictures of a lot of the events.

Do shoes run in families?



Thayne and two of his siblings all bought the same shoes. Here they are struttin' their family style.