Columbian Ortonian

Fall has come to Columbus! It rained all day on Friday and there is a biting cold in the air that feels like January in Utah. We walked to and around campus today (our house is close enough to do that) and we had to walk briskly to stay warm. Chris dressed Ellie in two jackets plus a blanket to keep her warm; basically the only thing you could see during the walk was her little red nose. The only thing that keeps me from thinking it's the middle of winter is how green it is still. Every once in awhile there are a few yellow or red leaves, but very few. Probably it's just been too warm until this weekend.

This week I explored the different grocery stores here. There's a place called Aldi which is a German store and is stocked entirely with their own generic brand (which is actually pretty good, and extremely affordable). The store itself is quite an adventure, though. The carts are all chained together, and in order to use one, you have to put a quarter in a slot on the handle. The cart releases and keeps your quarter until you chain it back to the rest of the carts, at which point it returns your quarter. The other thing is that you have to purchase shopping bags (or bring your own, which of course I forgot . . .) at the counter. One nice thing was that they had whole pineapples for 1.99, so we had broiled pineapple sundaes for dessert tonight, yum!

Eliza has developed a fascination with motorcycles, which she says "moker-suttle" or "moker-suck". . . she calls bikes and tricycles and anything with wheels a moker-suttle. She's also learned to make a noise that sounds like a dying dinosaur, kind of a mmmmmmaah that is highly disturbing. In other news, our little Ghandi (as Chris calls her) is learning to eat: we bought a box of Gerber Little Flakes that I think (and Ellie agrees) taste terrible. However, we hide them in the La Creme yogurt, and she'd been eating that consistently for an entire week! She also eats grapies (as she calls them) and a whole lot of cheese and Goldfish.

We had dinner with our next door neighbors on Thursday, a dental student and his girlfriend, the children's shoe department manager at Nordstrom. They made us chicken kabobs and a tomato salad that Ellie loved, and we brought Turtle Bars. It was fun to hear more about them, and we look forward to inviting them over for games one of these nights after Ellie goes to sleep--She spent the time over there chasing their cat and trying to get Chris (the dental student) to read a book with her.

Well, Chris has been sad all day because our beloved Buckeyes a) didn't get their game broadcast on ABC yesterday and b) LOST their game Saturday night. Chris says the weather has been gray today because the Buck's lost. If this theory is correct, everyone please start praying for the team, because I don't think I can handle gray for the rest of the season. :)


PS: I'm taking pictures of our house to send to you next week . . . everyone stay tuned and watch for the exciting pictures in an email box near you.