America's Winter Playground

Dec. 1st was our first snow. Very appropriate I thought. It was absolutely beautiful, and Edison adapted pretty well to it. He loves to throw snowballs, catch snowflakes on his tongue and mainly just eat it. We've had a couple of really nice snowy days which really makes things really feel like Christmas!

I love the big window in our front room that lets us gaze out at the snow all day long. Lovely.

Our little house so pretty in the snow!

Edison was so excited and moving so fast, I could hardly catch a picture of him!


This is coming in after the snow. I just has to put this one up because this is the face he makes when you tell him to say cheese. Such a funny kid.

Surprise!

Well, we're moving again. After four months in Amherst, NY, we'll be moving to Baltimore Maryland. Life has it's little surprises, doesn't it? Nate got accepted to Johns Hopkins to do a Master in Real Estate, which we can't pass up. Besides, we got sick of the buffalo wings here, and can't wait to move on to blue shell crab.

We spent our Thanksgiving Holiday in Baltimore looking for housing, and fell in love with the city. It's a really fun, upbeat and clean city (well, the parts we saw) and we're excited to try it out. I'm just hoping we can stay there longer than 4 months!

All of Nate's classes will be in that that snazzy high rise behind him in the picture. It's right on the water too! He's pretty excited.

Do we look like "Baltimorians"? Is that even what they're called?

Halloween

Holidays are so much more fun with little kids. Edison really grasped the "Halloween" concept and to my great pleasure was excited about every Halloween activity that we did.


I think I told Edison that we were going to eat the pumpkin seeds out of the pumpkin, but I must not have told him that we had to bake them first.

His very first carmel apple. I thought for sure he'd just lick the carmel off, but he surprised me and ate all the way to the core!

Trying on Mom's Halloween costume, over and over and over again.

Here he is in his pumpkin glory! I was so happy that he kept his costume on the entire ward party!!! And yes, that is candy corn juice spilling from his mouth. The center piece on our table was gone in about five min.

Such a happy pumpkin.

He even whispered a "trick or treat" at every stop.

Mixing in with his natural surroundings.

Poor Nate had to light those pumpkins over and over and over again because you know who had too much fun blowing the candles out.

Fall Has Been Good to Us.

Fall has been absolutely 100% enjoyable. No complaints here. Although the weather has gotten frigid, we've had some wonderful sunny "sweater weather" days as well. I had to post some pictures of those Fall moments that made me the happiest.

This is one of our beautiful trees outside out front room window. When the sun hits the tree just right, our front room couch is the best place to snuggle up and read.

Even better, watching the squirrels from inside come by on our tree for some bird feeder treats! (There he is on the second branch up)

I know it's blurry, but this picture captures our street at the very beginning of fall. It was like having streets paved with gold. It only lasted for about two days till all the leaves fell off, but it certainly was fun to walk through.

This is Niagara Falls River at the beginning of the season. Very, very pretty.

And of course, lots of leaves to rake and lots of piles to jump in! Edison loved jumping in the leaves.

Pumpkin patch, after pumpkin patch. We couldn't get enough.

When you're dressed right, a rainy day walk in the leaves can be nice!

If it was too wet and rainy outside, it gave us an excuse to stay inside and make some delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!!!

Pumpkins

I have officially helped Edison in becoming infatuated about pumpkins this Halloween season. I taught him songs, read him books, "It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown" has even made it to his favorite movie list. When you ask him what he dreamt about the night before, he'll say "pumpkins." Mission accomplished. So, here is a little video of Edison singing one of my favorite pumpkin carols, "Mr. Jack-o-lantern."

Grape picking and Juice making.

Apparently there is a lot of fruit to be picked out here. I had a friend from the ward invite Edison and I to come out to a grape orchard to pick our own concord grapes with the goal to make our own grape juice. This was not an opportunity that I wanted to miss out on...me making my own grape juice? Of course!

It was about an hour and half to the orchard, and fall was just beginning to creep in. It made for a beautiful drive.

Edison loved that grapes were finally for once not on a high refrigerator shelf, but just at the very touch of his fingertips. He ate plenty off the vine, and I encouraged it.

The orchard.

These grapes tasted just like how grapes should taste. None of this store bought plastic bag grape taste, but the real thing. The grape flavor that every candy, or juice, or soda tries to imitate, except these were real, and they were good.

In the end my friend and I picked at total of 110lbs of grapes. Give me a toga, and a vine for my head and I'm legit! I ended up taking a share of 30lbs at the total tally of $7.50.

Wow. I never thought I'd learn to can, fruits, veggies, tuna, ANYTHING. But here I am in my little kitchen with my hand picked 30lbs of grapes making my very own grape juice concentrate. I felt like I could take on the world. I will say however, that it's a lot of work, and something that I probably won't feel like doing till next year when I get nostalgic for the experience. I could of made a whole entire Thanksgiving dinner by the time I got through the last of the grapes.

However, the joy and pride I felt when I placed these 12 jars of hand picked, concord grape juice jars in my basement was unexplainable. Hand me the wheat, give me the grinder and I'll make you some bread. I did it, and boy was it delicious in every way.

Apple Picking

One of our first fall adventures was apple picking at Becker Farms. It was the classic apple picking experience and we couldn't have asked for more. Here are some pictures to highlight.

Here is Edison with his "stolen" apple that he took from the store while we were standing in line waiting to buy our apple picking bags. He promptly started to munch on it, and since there really was no use in giving back a half eaten apple and because there LITERALLY were apples scattered all along the floors, we figured he could just keep it. But doesn't he look guilty in this picture? We ended up eating the rest of it after his three or four bights.

And here is the apple orchard DRIPPING with apples. I had this adrenaline rush seeing all the apples everywhere... like the kind of rush you get at a buffet line when you feel like you need to try everything. I felt like I needed to grab all the apples I could.

Beautiful, delicious apples.

Edison was off like a shot, picking up all the half eaten apples on the ground and giving them a try. I think he had the same kind of adrenaline rush I had.

After our bags were stuffed with apples we stopped off at the pumpkin patch. Edison has been obsessed with pumpkins this fall (probably on my doing) and was thrilled to finally be in a real pumpkin patch.

He was also thrilled for the chance to sit on the big red tractor. He talks about it to this day.



Here are the fruits of our labor. We savored every one of those delicious apples. I made a fine apple crisp, and the rest we gobbled up whole. Natures candy.

Amherst, New York. Home.

So here we are, home sweet home in Amherst New York. So far we really like it. We are floored by how much space we have in our little duplex, and amazed by the kindness we have received from our ward, neighbors etc. We are slowly putting our house together and making it a real home. We love the trees, the squirrels, the birds...it's all so different to us!

I wish I had a better picture of our little home, but this is the only one where I had Edison sitting still. It 's a great little 3 bedroom duplex, and I promise to get more pictures of it once we piece it together.


And of course Edison loves our backyard. The people before us put in the swing set and slide and even left this great little truck that Edison spends HOURS playing in. It's great for when I'm making dinner!


Here is Niagara Falls! About 20 min away from us on the New York side. Canada is just a walk away, and we plan to visit that soon.


Edison loved the "BIG water fall" as he called it. It really is a sight to see!



We found this great ice cream shop (love that the shop was a big ice cream cone) called "Perry's" with the most delicious ice cream. If you come to visit us, chances are we will take you here.

We live in a place where Buffalo's have wings.

This picture was taken on one of our "exploring" drives. All the houses are super classic Americana, which I love. I love even more that a lot of them put these fake candles in the windows! It creates this really nice, warm "home-y" look.

Our drive led us to more ice cream! We need to get our share of anything with the word "ice" in it before we start detesting the word. We found this great ice cream shop called "Uncle G's Ice Cream". To top it off there was even the Niagara Frontier Fiddle Band playing outside. It was too classic to pass up. I live for this kind of stuff.

We settled for the Fluffer Nutter ice cream Sundae. I have never had anything like this in my entire life. Marshmallow whip, peanut butter sauce, custard ice cream. Oh. my. goodness.

So, thus far we are having a great time (eating a lot of ice cream), and getting back to our American roots. We can't wait for all the adventures that await us! Stay tuned!