The Wilds

We spent the better part of our Saturday on a Safari Adventure at The Wilds.  The Wilds is about an hour and a half outside of Columbus, OH so we picked up our darling in-laws, hopped in a van together and made the trek out to Cumberland, OH.  Our day had called for rain but it turned out to be an incredible, unseasonably cool, and beautiful day!

We got tickets for an open-air tour so when we got to the facility, we hopped out of our van and on to an open air bus that took us on a safari through 10,000 acres of an animal conservation area.  We saw a TON of animals and learned so much about the animals and the conservation efforts The Wilds continues to demonstrate.  It was really incredible!  Our tour guide, Emma, explained that the cooler temperatures would keep the animals pretty active and it seemed like it did.  We saw nearly all the animals that they have and the environment was just stunning.  Beautiful sky and land as far as the eye could see!  Rolling hills and bodies of water.  The sun peeking out behind white, puffy clouds.  Country life is my kind of living.  In a past life I was definitely a farm girl.

Kate and Mimi secure a spot on the open air bus!

So do me and Maya!

Forget the wild animals, Maya sees a butterfly!!

Bison from the farm next door that The Wilds manage.

Kate was reviewing the brochure of animals we
would see and checking them off as we went!

These are endangered Persian Onagers, a sub-species of wild ass,
or donkey.

This is an endangered Greater One-Horned Asian Rhino.  Before
the keeper gave him some food, he was raring to chase those
Persian Onagers on the hill and our whole tour bus was excited to
watch!

Hello, rhino!

Even though the rhino has his back to the wild donkeys, they
still have one eye on him!

On one of our stops there was a quick walk to the water.

The endangered and beautiful cheetah.  Kate's favorite.
The cheetah is the fastest land mammal in the world,
but only captures its prey 50% of the time!

I thought it fitting that the two lovies on display at the ice cream
stand were Kate and Maya's favorites: the giraffe (Maya) and
the cheetah with a baby cheetah (Kate)!

No safari adventure is complete without treats!

Because, ice cream.  You know, #everylastdrop.

This Ostrich came right up to us!  They are the
largest birds in the world!

I was in the middle of eating a salad and thought
for sure it would start pecking at it!

Here's looking at you, kid!

Maya spots the giraffes!

There they are.  So majestic and beautiful.

The endangered Scimitar-Horned Oryx.  This animal has been
extinct in the wild since the mid-1980's.  The conservation
efforts at The Wilds try to send baby oryx born there to Chad
to be part of the World Herd that serves as the source for
reintroduction.  Science is incredible.

This view gives me peace.

The endangered Bactrian camel.  This camel has two humps,
and, unfortunately, there are less than 1,000 left in the wild.

Bubba camel.  But this one actually was a girl...

No safari is complete without a camel selfie!

Mary and Tom!

Safari goers.

Our little fam.

We had a really nice time.  Check out this list of animals that we saw, in addition to the ones in the photos above:

-Common Eland
-Fringed Eared Oryx
-Sable Antelope
-Budgerigar
-Red-Crowned Crane (endangered)
-Trumpeter Swan
-African Painted Dog (endangered) - these guys were adorable and fiesty!  Evidently they come up with a game plan to gang up on their prey and are successful 90% of the time!
-Bactrian Deer (endangered)
-Indochinese Silka Deer
-Pere David's Deer
-Southern White Rhino
-Banteng (endangered)
-Central Chinese Goral
-Grevy's Zebra
-Przewalski's Wild Horse (endangered)

I find it incredibly inspiring that we are doing the research to keep these animals thriving and surviving and trying to reintroduce some of them into their natural habitats.  Yes, humans.  Well done.

Trip to MD

This was our year to celebrate Christmas day in Maryland so we jumped on a plane on December 23rd and spent the next few days in my home state!  It's so fun for me to see Kate with my Mom.  Kate loves her Gramma, PopPop, and Marley so it's always a special trip when we get to visit with them.  Plus, seeing Aunt Amy, Uncle James, Uncle T and Aunt Nelly, and GG and Grampy are always pluses in Kate's book too!

As usual, it was too short.  I suppose time flies when you're having fun!!

Waiting to board our flight!

Getting ready to fly!

But safety first!

We were greeted with yet another wonderful
chalkboard masterpiece by my Mom!

I heart this.

Kate loves her Gramma.

She also loves this little display wheel barrow basket
that my Mom puts decor in.  It's not at all a functioning
basket but Kate insisted on sitting in it.

Now that's a nice looking Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas from us!

Aunt Amy and Uncle James!

It is most definitely Christmas!

Waiting patiently to open presents!

A new Belle dress?!  We just had to put it on
immediately.  After all, Belle is Kate's
FAVORITE princess!

A little movie time and snuggles with my baby.

Kate loved Marl too.

She would just plop right on top of him and give
him a big hug!

She even insisted on sharing her blanket with him!  So cute.

He was such a good sport!

And no trip to MD is complete without a walk
to the park!

Uncle T found a walking stick!

So Kate did too!

Here's to hoping you all had a wonderful holiday as well!  Merry, merry Christmas!

Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace

This past weekend we had another visit with some wonderful out of town guests - my grandparents!  They drove in from Maryland on Friday, arrived just in time for dinner, stayed through the weekend, and left on Monday morning when Brian and I both had to get to work.  It was plenty of time to get into trouble!

On Friday night we headed to El Vaquero, a mexican restaurant right down the street from us, and then headed to Goodale Park for a short stroll to walk off all the rice and beans!  The next day, we started off with a visit to Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace.  (Side note: For those of you that have never eaten here, you must!  It is what I would call a 'gourmet hot dog restaurant', if you've ever heard of such a thing, but the hot dog concoctions are out of this world!  There are so many good dogs to choose from AND, if you are vegetarian, you can replace the normal all beef hot dog with a tofurkey veggie dog!  You have to look at the menu here.  It.is.amazing!)

After we were stuffed with hot dogs, we headed to Jeni's ice cream.  (Another Columbus, OH must eat.)  And, since there's always room for ice cream, we sampled and taste tested and bought a little scoop for each of us!  We spent the rest of the day making cupcakes and guacamole (ignore the weird combination) for a Father's Day picnic we were attending on Sunday, ordered Donatos pizza (yet another Cbus, OH must eat), shared a bottle of wine, celebrated Grampy's birthday, and watched The Fighter.

On Sunday, we celebrated all of our Fathers and Grandfathers at said picnic which was complete with all the summer essentials: a pool, lemonade, iced tea, tons of good food, great company, and even squirt guns!  It was a fantastic way to celebrate the day and lovely end to a magnificent weekend!

It was so wonderful to see you both, Grammie & Grampy!

(Our weekend appears to be food driven, but I can assure you it was 'spending quality time but also needing to eat' driven! Plus, we had so many good things to introduce to our visitors, and you've got to experience the local cuisine when you are on vacation, right?!)

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore...

By all definitions of the term, I am an 'east coast' girl.  I lived on the east coast for 26 years of my life. I grew up in Maryland, I went to college in Virginia, and I stayed in Virginia for about four years to begin my career.  In April of 2009, however, I moved to Ohio. Columbus, Ohio. The Buckeye State. The 'mid-west' to an east coast girl.

I absolutely love Ohio! I, of course, miss my family dearly (most of who are still in Maryland), but Ohio has turned out to be an incredible place.  (I am here because of my love, and any place where I am with my love is incredible, so I may just be blinded by how much I love my love rather than how much I love Ohio, but that still makes it incredible.)

I've been in incredible Ohio for nearly two years now, and while I am getting used to the lifestyle of the 'midwest' and learning my way around town, there is one thing that I still haven't come to terms with: the thunderstorms.

I have always loved thunderstorms.  In fact, I absolutely love to run in the rain, especially torrential downpours.  (It's so freeing, cleansing, and exhilarating!)  And I can remember playing in puddles in the rain as a kid.  (Don't worry, I had extremely responsible parents.  They just had a rain baby.)

In Ohio, you can see distances much further than what you can see where I grew up in Maryland.  The view is unobstructed, the land is relatively flat, and the sky extends much farther than I ever saw on the east coast.  It was one thing that I was amazed about when I moved here and still am, for that matter.

When thunderstorms are upon Columbus, Ohio, you can literally watch them roll in.  You see them in the distance and anticipate them until they are right on top of you.  One minute it will be sunny and bright, and the next minute it will be so dark you wonder if the sun will ever shine again.  It is absolutely terrifying watching the lighting and hearing the thunder descend upon you because it appears much stronger and destructive than the east coast lightening and thunder.  Then, the winds pick up so fast you'd think you were standing in a wind tunnel, and then it starts pouring so hard that it hurts.  Tornado sirens, warnings, and watches are issued, and I, once again, go over the safest places to be in the event of a tornado.

Here is my exact thought process every time a storm rolls in:
midwest + dark, ominous sky = thunderstorm = tornado = mayhem = tornado = Kansas = another tornado = Wizard of Oz = scary monkeys, Dorothy, and finding some courage = there's no place like home = Maryland, but Ohio now = midwest = flat land = tornadoes.

It's taken me a while to get to the point, but here it is: I'm an east coast girl living in a mid-west state, and the storms here scare the living daylights out of me.

At 2:43 am last night, the tornado sirens were going off.  (This was terrifying.  I kept envisioning a tornado coming out of nowhere (since it was dark), and all of the sudden the roof being lifted off and blown away...You know, like you see in the movies?!)  The lighting was so intense that the entire room lit up and stayed lit for a few seconds, and the thunder literally shook the house.  This was no piddly thunderstorm.  The radio stations had emergency broadcasts on, people lost electricity, the rain pummeled down, and some reports have winds gusting at 102 miles per hour.  Brian and I were both awake, and while Brian was much more level headed, I was ready to grab Bun and Jack, wrap ourselves in a comforter, and head to the area beneath the stairs in our basement.  (Ironically, when we called the non-emergency police to see what the reports were they told us to listen to this one radio station, after they reassured us that everything was ok, and right as we turned the radio on Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody started playing - "Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?!".  It was quite comical to be quite honest!)  Fortunately, we made it through the night without any additional warnings, sirens, or tornadoes. 

Our forecast today includes several severe thunderstorms intermixed with rain...

...I don't know why they bother differentiating between severe and not - they are all severe in Ohio.

Nothing Tips Like A Cow...

...at least in Ohio.

So, we've been searching high and low for venues in Maryland. Both of us have been a bit disappointed in the options that fit within our budget and the lack of images or photos that we have been able to find for these options. (It's like a modern day Goldilocks & The Endless Search for a Venue in Maryland Story - this one is too big, this one is too small, this one is too far, etc.) Since we live in Ohio, it's not the easiest thing to just make an appointment and go check the place out. And then it dawned on us the other day, why aren't we looking in Ohio again? And neither of us really had a good reason...

So, we have extended our "venue" range to include OH, and have been pleasantly surprised with the smorgasbord of venues that we have already found that we a.) like b.) are in our price range, and c.) can go check out without having to book a flight...or drive 7 hours. We are actually very excited about the possibilities and being able to see them first hand makes all the difference in the world. It also makes it really feel real - we are planning a wedding!