Life, Love, and Marathons: First Weekend of Fall

Fall officially started on Friday but it's been feeling more like the middle of summer here in Ohio. It's been 90+ degrees the last 4 days which is the hottest we've seen it for a couple months. I would've loved to have had this weather last month when the pools were still open but that's how Ohio weather goes sometimes. I think it's supposed to be 60 degrees in a few days too. Again, Ohio weather is crazy.

I had to go into work for a few hours on Friday morning so Todd took Lucy to preschool and then I was able to pick her up. We originally planned on going to the Delaware County Fair but with it being so hot, Lucy decided she wanted to go to the park and then have lunch at the North Market. Cece, unfortunately, didn't have a say in the matter because at this point, all she can say is mama, dada, and then point at things and grunt. We headed down to Goodale Park to play and Lucy lasted about 10 minutes before wanting to go to the North Market. See, good thing we didn't go to fair because we probably wouldn't have lasted very long! It was HOT! We ate lunch at the North Market and ended with our normal kid's scoop of ice cream from Jeni's. I had a ton of gift cards from there so that's why I usually treat the girls when we're there but we're down to our last $10 gift card and if you've ever been to Jeni's, you know that $10 won't get you very far.

Goodale Park

We went to this park about a year ago when I was on maternity leave and Lucy immediately remembered the "stage" and so that was our first stop

Then we made it over to the playground where she played for all of 10 minutes

North Market

She loves this scale and also collecting brochures; she says she has to bring them home to her bitty baby to show her what we did since she can't come

I usually pack the kids' lunches and then Lucy will get a pretzel stick from Brezel and ice cream from Jeni's

Always wanting to eat

Lucy picked a good flavor--peanut butter and chocolate!

Lucy sharing her ice cream with Cece--this was totally unprompted too!

Cece had to do some baby yoga before her nap

Since Lucy isn't napping anymore, she's been wanting to work on this workbook together to practice writing her letters and figuring out how to sound out words. Might as well take advantage of her wanting to learn before it becomes a chore!

And then when it's time to either wake Cece up or get her out of her crib, recently, Lucy has been wanting to do it and then calls down for me to actually come up and pick her up out of the crib

While Todd watched the OSU football game at home with the girls on Saturday, I went to a baby shower for a friend who is a "Honda wife." There are a group of a few of us who all met because our husbands work at Honda and are friends so we will go out for girls' nights and invite each other to kid's birthday parties, showers, etc. I hadn't seen a few of them in a couple months so it was great to see them. Brie, one of the other Honda wives, hosted the shower, and she did an incredible job with all the details for the "Adventure Awaits" theme.

Welcome to Ana's baby shower

Gifts went in the teepee

One of the activities was to write a bucket list of things that Ana & Nick should do with the baby or advice to give them

Spread of food

Favor were either little cactus or succulent plants

Ana opening presents

All the ladies at the shower

When Cece was down for her afternoon nap, I took Lucy on a bunch of errands so Todd could have a couple uninterrupted hours working in the basement. I swear, one of these days I'll actually be able to show you the finished product of all his hard work. Once we got home and Cece was up, we decided to use up another gift card we've had for awhile (I won it at a holiday party last year) and went to dinner at P.F. Chang's. The girls were equally entertained with trying to use chopsticks and Lucy did surprisingly well using them.

Lucy got a hedgehog cake pop at Target since I made her come along and run errands

Excited about her chopsticks

Cece giving them a try

On Sunday, we went to church and then Todd & the girls left for the day to drive up for our nephew's birthday party. I had a work meeting in the afternoon for the fitness studio that I teach at that I needed to attend, especially since we just found out last week that it's under new ownership. I thought since I had a few hours to myself, I'd have some time to catch up on shows or read my book but somehow all my time was filled with grocery shopping, laundry, meal prepping, going to my staff meeting, and running a few more errands. I did, however, find time to go to the grand opening of Smidge and Pinch, a party & baking supply and decor store. They've been in Powell for awhile but moved a couple doors down and are now also selling cheesecake made by The Cheesecake Girl. Her cheesecakes are amazing (so many different flavors) and I think this might be bad that she's selling cheesecake there full-time because this is only a half mile from my house.

Smidge & Pinch in Powell