Cheeser

It's been a pretty mellow week as far as adventures go. We thought about going down to an Irish festival near the coast, but it turned out that most of the good stuff would be on Sunday, so we decided against it. Instead, we invited the missionaries over for dinner, but we didn't get any good pictures of that adventure.

Fortunately, Topher has been a barrel of laughs. I'm afraid that some people might have taken my comment about Topher smiling for the camera as hyperbole (as though that ever happens here). So, I thought I'd share with you the one face of Topher.

Proof that smiles are contagious.

I hope you all enjoyed that.

In milestone news: nothing is safe.

There Are Many Advantages....

...And disadvantages to having a mobile child. We're also learning new things everyday such as: garbage is apparently edible, turkeys get freaked out when a baby pounds on the glass door, babies are SPEEDY and can grab things as quick as lightning, and it's a bad idea to spend too much time indoors. One important thing we've discovered is that Topher likes to do dishes!! Every time I open the dishwasher he gets a crazy look on his face and keeps his eyes on the prize while he speed crawls/cruises (depending on his mood :) over to "help". Honestly, I know he won't want to do dishes forever, so I'm enjoying his enthusiasm (even if all he wants to do is splash water and try unsuccessfully to eat the detergent :).

Now if I can only get him to change his own diapers we'll be doing great :).

Critter Country 2

Now that we are coming up on a year of having lived in Connecticut, we figure that it is about time for a follow-up on our profile of the various critters we've met since we've been out here. So, without further ado, here are some of our newest friends.

We can only wish we'd met a penguin. I just wanted this here to get things started.

Apparently since we've become so used to run of the mill spiders, the powers that be decided to start sending us spiders with bizarrely unproportional features.

Fortunately, the fabled Giant Second Pair of Legs Spider isn't the brightest character in the world and made his first appearance on the wall just above the toilet.

Given the expected onslaught of bugs, we thought we'd protect ourselves with a citronella candle.

Something tells me that this is not how it's supposed to get rid of bugs.

We also got a nice picture of a seagull flying.

It wasn't even in search of garbage.

Living so close to the woods have given us much reason to wonder just how many critters are actually around us. There are hundreds of caterpillars in the streets these days, so we can only imagine there are tens of thousands in the trees around us.

Before

After

We also got a shot of a Turkey with two hatchlings (only one is pictured. Don't waste too much time staring at the picture).

Turkeys just always seemed to be one of those creatures that only exist as adults. It blew my mind to see a baby turkey, like when I learned you could make brownies from scratch instead of a boxed mix.

When we moved out here and I noticed how dark and moist everything was, I figured it must be snake central. Interestingly enough, it wasn't until Saturday that I finally saw one out here.

After talking this picture I tried to scare the snake off the road and back into the bushes. My efforts were futile as my stomping and shouting only made him hold his ground even firmer. Apparently that is the fundamental difference between snakes and squirrels. That and the whole legs vs. no legs thing.

Interestingly, this question gives rise to some interesting propositions. Like, what do you suppose the feral goat population of Connecticut is?

They are plotting in the woods as we speak.

In other news, Topher has figured out what we mean when we tell him to smile for the camera.

Full on half of our pictures these days feature this exact face.

We also made a trip down to the coast with our friends the Redds. We had a great time.

But Topher was a little more hesitant.

It may have had something to do with his refusal to nap during the whole day.

After not having been able to make it through the entire museum last week, we were happy to find a modern art installation along the coast.

It's actually a vandalized information sign, but I had you going for a minute there, didn't I?

Hot off the presses

I hope I'm not wasting my material for my weekend update, but we wanted to show what great strides Topher is making:

I guess it just took the right motivation. Interestingly, Topher crawls the same way that Megan's mom did - on his knee with one leg and on his foot with the other. Whatever gets the job done, right?

Stinkin' Lincoln

I honestly thought that after Boston last week we would settle down for a while. Little did I know (until the morning of, when Topher decided he wanted to play at 6:30 in the morning so I turned on the morning news) that yesterday was going to be Connecticut's Open House, meaning that a bunch of things were free across the state. Once we woke up again after Topher fell back asleep, we hopped in the car to see what we could find.

The start of the day was a little sketchy when we were going to have wait 50 minutes to get into the Nathan Hale Homestead.

I only regret that I have but 15 minutes to wait for the next tour.

We decided we'd pack it up and come back another day. We actually visited once before when we were out interviewing. We couldn't take the tour then either.

From there we decided to head into Hartford. Interestingly this was our first trip into the city, despite having lived 30 minutes away for the last 10 months.

Our status as country bumpkins again showed through as we took multiple shots of this bridge.

Bridges, especially bridges this awesome, are somewhat scarce in Utah.

We were amazed by all the sites. Things are so advanced the pharmacies even have pediments.

They've gone about as fer as they can go.

Once in Hartford we made our way to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house. Megan had a brush with greatness when she met Abraham Lincoln.

The only thing I heard Lincoln say was "It's good to see someone else in a bow-tie" to another employee. He could work on his impersonation.

I was happy enough when I found out they had free popcorn.

I'm a little surprised I decided to post this one. Pretend you didn't see it.

From there we headed to a museum in the center of Hartford.

Topher insisted on walking much of the way. Perhaps the Pretty Old Furniture display wasn't holding his interest.

After all of Megan's fun at historic sites around the state, I got to have my fun at the museum.

No funny caption here, just a happy wannabe artist.

Topher was a pretty happy camper, too.

People so enjoy Topher when we're out and about, we were tempted to stick a hat out in front of him to see if we could collect any change for the entertainment.

All and all it was a great day. I just wonder if we'll be able to keep up the pace in the coming weeks.

In milestone news, Megan finally managed to get a picture of Topher's tooth.

This kind of reminds me of the creepy pictures in dentists' offices. Only more cute than creepy.

And for those of you who watch the videos we post, here is a special treat:

More Adventures

After all the fun we had last week, we decided to keep it up while we can. In Megan's first post on this blog, she noted that she expected that we would get to Boston and Salem within the first week or two of getting to Connecticut. Well, if you take Salem out of that and replace "week" with "year," then she was exactly right.

Topher's impression of how he felt starting out.

And then after driving for two hours. Please note: these pictures were taken in a parking lot. We're not bad parents.

We discovered just how well suited we were to living in the "quiet corner" of Connecticut. Big cities are not our bag.

It was kind of embarrassing how many times we gawked and said, "Wow, that's the tallest building I've ever seen!"

Megan was back in history heaven.

Samuel Adams himself wrapped that caution tape around the pillar.

What could make Megan look like this?

Benjamin Franklin!

What could make Scott look like this?

A crazy Yo Yo dude!

The show was pretty sweet. You can check out yoyoshow.com for more info. If you ever get a chance to see him, it's well worth it.

What could make Topher look like this?

Pure and utter hatred for his hat! (It might also be an impression of Popeye)

We went as far as we could, but couldn't make it all the way to the end of the Freedom Trail. Here is the Bunker Hill monument from afar.

I would have got a little closer, but some hoodlums had claimed the end of the pier as their own. Meanwhile, the jellyfish kept a wary eye on anyone approaching the water. We count ourselves lucky that we weren't caught in the crossfire should something have erupted between the two.

Topher decided to do a little showboating when we stopped and demonstrated his new found ability to stand without support. We expect his first steps any moment now.

Not pictured is the (razor sharp) tooth that he recently cut. Every attempt to get a picture of it has been thwarted. I'm pretty sure the attempts we have made to photograph it have been pretty emotionally scarring.

All and all it was a great trip. The only problem with the Freedom Trail is that once you've gone as far as you can stand, you have to turn around and do it all again.

Topher summed up what we all felt like by the end.

Hello Mudda

You should be able to gather from the lack of updates for the past little while that our life has been somewhat devoid of adventures. Well, with my mom visiting for the past week, we decided to make up for lost time.

First up, we went to a memorial day picnic. Nothing too exciting here, but Topher was sportting a wicked awesome hairdo.

No, we haven't become trendy parents (perish the thought!). This was our attempt to keep his little head from burning.

Megan was still worried, so we borrowed a hat because we couldn't find our own.

Topher was still worried so he made every effort to rip it off.

We then made a trip back to Gillette castle, because we understood that it would be open this time around.

I look like I need the bathroom in this photo. It's not true.

Topher seemed to enjoy himself, but got a little hosed when they wouldn't let him touch the wooden light switches.

We took the opportunity to go out to eat a few times, but learned that our daily lessons in strict manners have been largely for naught.

Toph spent most of our meals staring at people. It was both hilarious and embarrassing, or what I call "parenting."

Later in the week, we also took in a baseball game with some friends from our church.

Mom surprised us all by actually enjoying the game.

Topher took to staring at people again (Only to be answered with "He's so cute!" ad nauseum).

He took a moment to pose for a picture, but said that a smile would cost an order of Nachos.

Here is my action shot.

If you look close, you can see a white streak from the left and moving up. It was caught.

The game went great. The only bad part was that the fireworks afterwards (It was Firework Friday) apparently ushered in Armageddon.

Not pictured: Sporadic explosions and a changing sky color.

Our last trip for the week was down to the Mystic Seaport. For the uninitiated, Mystic refers to the name of the town, not the town's gypsy curse.

Some random lady made us take this photo. I like it, but the circumstances were a little bizarre.

When I helped remove the gypsy curse, the townspeople (sans the disgruntled ointment purveyors) decided to name a wharf after me.

Don't tell the Mystics, but I'm not 100% sure what a wharf is. But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Megan was in history heaven, but Topher and I were a little disappointed to find that Mystic had exactly zero pirate history.

Fortunately, the gift shop apparently missed that memo.

We finished off with a quick trip to a favorite spot at the borough of Stonington.

Thanks for coming out, mom!

That's it for now. We're trying to make it a point to update more often, and something tells me that with the recent upswing in the number of spiders around (oh yeah, and Topher is cruising on furniture), we should have plenty to talk about.