The last hurrah

We were talking the other day and realized that our days are limited before we have these babies. Rachel's Mom is comming in a week, and just three days later we'll be at the hospital. Crazy. This realization made us decide, also, that we needed to take advantage of this Saturday. So we went to Pittsburgh.

We figured that we've never really been to Pittsburgh before, and now was as good a time as any to see what the city had to offer. So we got in the car and 2 hours and 1 package of Oreo cookies later we were driving around in a maze of freeways trying to figure out where we were in this crazy city.

There is a lot to do in Pittsburgh, and we only had one day to do it in. We decided on the Children's museum first, because that seemed to be best for the whole family: Evelyn would love it, it's in relatively confined place so Rachel could sit down and still see what was going on, and I could use Evelyn as an excuse for allowing my inner child to go wild with the cool things they had to play with. We ended up spending most of the day there.

After the Children's museum, we decided to go to IKEA. I know, you're probably wondering why we would want to go to a furniture store. Well, neither Rachel nor myself have ever been to IKEA, and we had heard from several sources that it was this magical land of fun. So, although we were a little skeptical about it, we went to see what the place had to offer.

Our conclusion: It's a furniture store. I'm sorry if you are a "Fan of IKEA" on facebook (if you are, you may check out the official IKEA fan club- yes, it's a real club, meant to "personalize your IKEA experience"), but I just wasn't that impressed. We even got some mac-n-cheese for Evelyn at the IKEA restaurant. It was mushy. And all of the furniture looked as if the manufacturers have a limited selection of rectangular blocks with which to make it from. Evelyn, on the other hand, loves the place. It was like a wonderland of fun for her to run around in and try out all the beds/couches, or hide between the area rugs and then jump out squealing and giggling.

So, that was pretty much our Saturday. It was fun and we will have to head back "the Burgh" sometime and see what else the city has to offer. In the meantime, we are just enjoying life and looking forward to meeting our little ones.

This was when we were just playing around at home. She was so cute!

The Pittsburgh Children's Museum was a fun place for everyone!

Evelyn is a Fan of IKEA

Here's our girl resting on my head at the end of a long day.

And here is one of the last belly pictures before the arrival of the twins (35.5 weeks)

A Great Discovery for all Clevelanders

We discovered-thanks to a tip from a friend- an amazing deal here in Cleveland. First some background...

With the twins almost here, as well as the long months of winter, Rachel has been looking for ways to avoid the cabin fever that comes from being couped up in a house all day that is too small for our expanding family. See, the problem with winter is that it is too cold to be outside for long, especially with kids. Before we had children (and even with Evelyn when she was little), we filled these long months by going to dollar movies, window shopping at the mall, or visiting our libraries and getting good books to read together. Unfortunately, none of these activities is particularly appealing to young children. Kids prefer things like the zoo (indoor zoos in winter), or an indoor playground. The problem is that getting individual passes to all of these places would be prohibitively expensive. That is when we talked to our friend and discovered the Boonshoft Museum pass.

The Boonshoft Museum is a discovery museum down in Dayton. I will probably never go there. But I still bought the pass. Why? Because the museum has reciprocity agreements with over a hundred places throughout the nation that are kid-friendly, including several here in Cleveland. Thus, for the same price as a yearly pass to the Cleveland zoo, I got the Boonshoft pass which includes a yearly pass to the Zoo, Rainforest (indoor zoo), Museum of Natural History (Dinosaur Museum), the Akron zoo (short drive from here), Inventor's Hall of Fame (sounds interesting, but not super kid-friendly) and the Great Lakes Science Center (a discovery museum for kids). And that is just in around here! Bring on the winter!

So what did we do this week? Well, we went to the zoo. Twice. We also visited the Rainforest for the first time and I have to admit that it better than I expected. Evelyn really liked it too- especially the monkeys. It has been a lot of fun watching Evelyn grow up and become more interactive. We are trying to spend a lot of quality time with her since in a couple of weeks we will have three to divide our attention and she won't be our only little girl anymore (sort of a sad thought). She is going to be a great sister though, and I am excited to watch her take on that role.

Rachel is hanging in there and will deliver exactly 2 weeks from today assuming that all goes well. She is still active, but is slowing down a little for this last little bit of her pregnancy. But only a little. Like I said, we went to the zoo twice this week and she is at an interpreting job as I type this blog post. The thing is, that she also looks amazing as she is doing all this. I married well.

One other thing happened this week. We hosted a prospective dental student at our house while he was going through the interview process. It was sort of fun to take him around the school and the neighborhoods. Also, I realized how much I really like it out here as I answered his questions about life in Cleveland and at the school. This is surely the place we are meant to be.

This has been a great week. We have been getting back into the routine of school and it is sort of nice to have things back to normal. Rachel is doing fantastic with the pregnancy- our doctor said that this is officially the best twin pregnancy he has ever seen. Despite this, however, she has been pretty sore lately. Somehow she still manages to get out and be pretty active considering that she is just three-and-a-half weeks away from her delivery date. She even spent a full morning walking around the zoo on Monday (and a full afternoon recovering from it).

Friday was my birthday, and I can honestly say that it was wonderful. Rachel took me out to eat at Applebees and she gave me some cool tools that I have been wanting. My parents also got me a BBQ grill. We love BBQ and so we are excited to have something a little bigger than our hibachi grill to cook on.

Evelyn is as cute as ever. She is growing so fast. In three days she will be a year and a half old, but it's hard to imagine what our lives were like without her. She is definitely our little bugaboo. Right now she is getting molars...again. Rachel and I have decided that babies seem to ALWAYS be teething. Evelyn just finishes with one tooth when another one starts to erupt. Poor girl. Have you ever seen molars after they first come in??? They have about six spikes on them that have to burst through the gums. It's like something out of a horror movie!

Here's our sweet girl in a very ticklish mood!

Here are some birthday pictures.

Amazing Vacation

Hold on and get ready for the longest blog post in the world! Seriously. It has been a fantastic, amazing, and busy 2 weeks with my family. In order to cover everything that we did, I'll give a semi-short description of each place followed by pictures. Some of the random pictures are out of order, but that's ok. The final pictures of the blog are 3D ultrasounds of our baby girl and our baby boy!

My parents, grandparents, and sister all arrived at our house exactly 2 weeks ago. They were tired after having a long drive across the country, so Sunday was mostly spent resting. Monday and Tuesday gave us a chance to show them some of our favorite places in Cleveland. Among them were the West Side Market, the Case Western campus (my dad and grandpa are big into college campuses), Kirtland, and the beach at Headlands State Park.

These are mine and Allison's "puzzle rocks" that we made.




Wednesday morning we loaded up the car and drove to Niagara falls. As we got close we could tell that the weather was not going to cooperate with our plans. It was raining as we got out of the car and walked to the view overlooking the falls. It was actually sort of cool because the mist of the waterfall rose up and blended with the low rainclouds, almost giving the illusion that there was a second waterfall in front of Niagara that was "falling upwards" to the sky. We all took the Maid of the Mist boat tour and had a great time standing in the rain with the mist and wind from the falls circling around us. After the boat ride a few of us hiked up on the pathway that lets you get closer to the falling water, and then we all met inside to watch the IMAX film about the falls. I guess we figured that if the weather was too bad for us to go out, that IMAX was the best substitute available. That night we stayed in a hotel on the way to our next destination- Palmyra.

Thursday we went to Palmyra, New York. There are several interesting church history sites here that we saw, including The Sacred Grove (where Grandpa got lost), the printing press, the Hill Cumorah (which my dad just had to roll down), and the place where the church was organized. Evelyn and I also enjoyed hanging out and giving ourselves "mini-tours" to keep her quiet during the missionary's presentations. Attractions included leafs, rocks, dirt, and flowers. Also, I have to mention our lunch at Chill-and-Grill, a local diner that was actually pretty good. That night we drove to Albany where we stayed with Arlen and Lorinda, (sort of relatives but not really since the only relation is through my aunt's family- more like friends, actually) who were very nice and who made us a great breakfast.


Friday we woke up and, as mentioned before, ate a great breakfast, and then we were off on the road again. Our destination was my aunt Susan's house in Connecticut. According to Mapquest, the drive should have only taken about 2 hours. Figuring that we had all day to get there, we decided on a more circuitous route that meandered down through the Catskill mountains and through the town of Hyde Park. There, we went on a tour of the Vanderbilt mansion which has been preserved as a "monument to the gilded age." The sheer size of the mansion was incredible (about 55,000 square feet), and even more so when you consider that this was only a very small portion of all that this family owned (The Biltmore mansion in North Carolina, for example, is a whopping 175,000 square feet). An interesting point that the guide made was about the name given the era- "the gilded age." Gilding, as defined by Wikipedia, means"Having a falsely pleasant appearance; sugarcoated." It is amazing that people could live such a lavish lifestyle in the midst of the great depression. In fact, when it came time to sell the mansion (fully furnished with 700 acres of surrounding property), the family could not get anyone to buy despite the incredibly low asking price of 250,000. Finally, the National Park Service acquired it for the price of $1 to preserve as a historic landmark. On our way out of Hyde Park we stopped by the Roosevelt mansion, but arrived too late for a tour. We were still able to walk around the grounds, however, before continuing on our trip and arriving at Susan's house that night.




Saturday was an amazing day at a place called Old Sturbridge Village. The village covers over 200 acres and employs hundreds of staff and volunteer workers, all playing their parts exceptionally well, to recreate a New England town as it might have been around the turn of the 19th century. It was fascinating to talk to the various craftsmen about their trades. Especially interesting, I thought, was the surgeon. As he told us, "you can't call me a doctor, because that would imply that I had some sort of formal training." Also, we got there on a good day because besides the normal workers, there was a regiment of volunteer militia-men who walked the grounds giving demonstrations, and later staged a battle reenactment. The whole day was informative, interesting, and most of all- Fun.

Here's Rachel getting some practice on the birthing chair! There's a hole in the middle for the baby to fall out of.

Nice Pig. Makes me hungry.

Sunday we took a much needed break at Susan's house that included church, going on walks, sleeping, reading, and breaking into people's homes through the unlocked garage doors. That's my Grandpa. Actually- don't worry, because technically nobody was living in the newly-built houses yet. We also went to visit an old cemetery. Evelyn didn't see the appeal in old cemeteries, however, so me and her walked over to a nearby skate park with nobody there and had some good times with her stroller.

This is the biggest tree in Connecticut. Oh Baby!

Monday we arose bright and early and drove to Boston! Once we were finally able to find parking and regroup (we were in separate cars) we lined up for a Boston Duck tour. This was cool. The Ducks are actually modified amphibious assault vehicles used by the military. They look like boats on wheels. Our tour guide, a self professed John Lennon wannabe, drove us trough the streets of Boston showing us all of the historic locations and buildings that the city had to offer. After a while, amidst quacking from all on board (yes, we made duck noises), we drove straight into the Charles River where the tour continued via waterway. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and Evelyn even got to try her hand at steering the Duck while we were on the water. Also, this was a fantastic way to see and experience Boston when we had a very limited amount of time. On the way out of Boston we made sure to visit Lexington and Concord, as well as the Minute Man National Park and the Concord North Bridge. All of these places seemed to make the claim the "The shot heard around the world" took place at that location. When pressed on the subject, an agitated tour guide set the record straight by explaining the "the shot" is actually a metaphor...or something like that. Actually, I had never realized that the battle didn't even take place at just one spot. Rather, there was fighting all along the 20 mile stretch between Lexington and Boston known as Battle Road. On a less informative note, Evelyn really, really liked playing in the water at the bridge. I think this was her favorite day.

Here is Evelyn's "Don't-mess-with-me-while-I'm-driving face."

Tuesday didn't really go according to plan. We were going to drive 5 hours to Amish country in the morning, and then spend the entire afternoon doing Amish stuff. Somehow, this 5 hour drive turned into an 11 hour saga with detours to Valley Forge (which was actually pretty cool) and Delaware. To quote the chief map-guy and navigator of our trip- "We can't be in Delaware- we aren't even supposed to be close to Delaware!" Well, I guess that is one more state we can add to our "places visited" list.

Allison and Eva both had their first fast-food hamburger on this trip!

Welcome to Delaware!

Wednesday was a long, busy day, but also one of the best on the trip. We began by going to a working Amish farm. Actually, it wasn't Amish. It was a working replica of a working Amish farm, which I thought was probably better since we had more freedom to explore than we would in a real home. There were also tour guides to bring us through the farmhouse, and explain how- and why- they Amish live the way they do. It was all very interesting and the lifestyle was actually sort of appealing (but I think after about a week I would be ready to turn on some lights and hop in my car again). Evelyn loved the farm animals (except for the horse- the horse growled at her) and I stayed with her to play with the animals while the rest of the family took a bus tour. According to Rachel, it was pretty cool and they got to meet some real Amish craftsmen and talk to some cute Amish kids. When they got back from their tour we went to lunch at an Amish-style restaurant which, as it turns out, is much like any other family restaurant but with really good mashed potatoes and gravy. After lunch we did some Amish shopping before getting in the car and heading off to Gettysburg. At the visitor's center, most of the group watched a movie about the battle before we got in the car and took a self-guided tour of the battlegrounds. Wow. This 3 day battle took place over a large area and inflicted huge casualties (somewhere around 50,000). It made me wonder if anyone ever stopped in the middle of all the carnage and thought about how stupid it all was. Probably not. Actually, it was sort of the turning point of the civil war, so I guess it wasn't that stupid. But still sad. It was sobering to see all the monuments to the different regiments that were wiped out as a result of the battle. That night we drove until 2:30 a.m. to arrive in Cleveland.



Thursday we relaxed at home. That was nice.

Evelyn has finally started to cuddle with us a little bit! We take all we can get.

Friday morning we went to Lakeview Cemetary which is about a mile from our home in Cleveland. The Wade chapel is my favorite part of the cemetery as it is so full of symbolism and amazing art. The tour guide gussed that we were LDS (because our family is from Idaho) and gave us the 'LDS tour.' It turns out that he has done a LOT of research into how the artistry will impact people from different religions. The most interesting part was that one of the men on the wall was called the Urim and Thummum (There was a special priest that used a perfectly round ball that showed the way to go with the power of God). The stained-glass window was also especially cool. We also saw the Garfield monument and Rockefeller's giant stick-in-the-ground grave. All the women-folk then went to the doctor where they got to see Rachel get an ultrasound. Our babies are doing great! Our little girl is weighing in at 3 lbs 11 oz and our little boy is 3 lbs 14 oz. They will be quite tiny in four weeks when we meet them. After the ultrasound the girls returned home for the rush to get everything packed up to leave. That evening we drove my family to the airport and said our goodbyes. As mentioned in the previous post, they are giving us their van so we will have room for our new additions that will arrive in about a month. All said, we had an absolutely incredible and unforgettable vacation with them.

This first one is our little boy. He wasn't in the greatest position, so his right eye sort of looks like it's not there. Don't worry, the doctor assured us that all is well. He sort of looks like a little old man.

This is our little girl. She is rubbing her eye with her hand, but you can see the other eye, the nose, and her little mouth. She looks very sleepy.