leprechaun carpet

last week i started to feel a little homesick with all the pictures friends and family were posting of my beloved mountains and the changing leaves.  it's true, my heart will always reel me back to the mountains...but for now, i am soaking in all the beauty the midwest has to offer.

on wednesday night, brennan and i got to go out to gahanna for dinner at a physicians house.  they had a huge yard and goats!  and chickens and ducks.  i think i almost have brennan convinced we need a mini-farm someday.  i mean, what's better than a horse to get around town and fresh eggs every day?  we'd probably save tons of money with the amount of baking i do around here.  

what can i say?  goats love me.

and now for some shameless columbus promoting.

before we moved to ohio, brennan told me that when he landed in columbus as a missionary 5 years ago, all the green reminded him of ireland.  unfortunately i've never been to ireland, and i don't have a really nice camera to take cool pictures of all the green, but with these pictures and a little imagination, you can get a pretty good idea.  it is green.

green in the water

green on the trees

green on the rocks

green on the ground

green in the air.

there are other colors, too. 

 

last thing...ohio has a lot of corn and a lot of sky.  and i love it.

and the thunder rolls...

last night i was awaken by thunder.
thunder out here is not like in the west...you know the phrase "rolling thunder"?  well, the midwest thunder really does roll.  immediately following the first roll of thunder, i heard our printer in the other room start beeping and acting like it was going to print something...creeeeeeeeeeepy.  so naturally i woke my husband up to go check it out.  then in my mind i decided we really need to keep the baseball bat in our bedroom.  

anyway, it's been almost a month since leaving the 801, and we've decided columbus is a pretty cool city.  we love living in a bicycle friendly city and our date nights usually consist of riding our bikes into downtown to find somewhere to eat or check out some event (like the festival latino, woot woot!).  

               

one of our favorite places to eat is the North Market.  it's basically just a bunch of local restaurants in a warehouse, and on saturdays there is a small farmers market outside.  but the most awesome thing is that it's right off the olentangy river trail, so we ride our bikes and eat delicious food.  win.

        

just a few blocks down the road is columbus commons which might be the coolest park downtown.  they have fitness classes, concerts, an interactive game thing, a carousel, a food truck rally, and who knows what else!

   

korean bbq in a burrito.  everything tastes better in a tortilla

if we don't want to go downtown, there are some pretty awesome things right in our backyard.

like Antrim Park, complete with a quarried lake and jogging trail around the lake.  or in the opposite direction there's the Park of Roses -- 13 acres with three different rose gardens and 400+ different kinds of roses.  both of these parks are about a 10 minute bike ride from our apartment.  did i mention there is a park just about every half mile along the river trail?

there's also lots of free concerts, delicious bbq, one of the best ranked zoos in the world, the best ice cream you'll ever eat, and cool people (aka us), so now that you know how awesome columbus is, come visit!