another new city

this is my view this morning. it's one of those mornings where it snows, and snows, and snows, and there is almost nothing to show for it. kind of like a snow globe. like maybe the same snow from the ground just keeps getting swooshed up into the air again to fall back down where it sat before.

we made a last minute trip to columbus for one night this past weekend. the oregon state beavers gymnastics team was at ohio state. given that joseph is a beaver, and shows little attachment to his undergrad school, i think it's adorable he loves OSU women's gymnastics. so we made a mini weekend of it. and this is our little story:)

first stop, OSU VS. OSU VS. BGSU. hadley wore her beavers cheerleader outfit with much pride, thought she didn't have a clue what the pride was for. orange? beavers? cheerleaders? gymnastics? whatever the case, she was a happy girl. we were able to see warmups in addition to the entire competition. fun stuff! it was a close meet, but oregon pulled it off. it was super fun to have our team win:) we were three of a handful of oregon fans there, so i know our cheering significantly contributed to the win. go team gilbuena.

we were lucky to snag a great last minute deal on an amazing hotel downtown columbus, and we had a great view up on the 16th floor. i forgot to pack our bathing suits, so we never even looked at the pool:( but we really enjoyed the rest of the building. especially our king sized bed. so. much. room. we also ate dinner across the street at a neat little irish pub, barley's. our sweet little girl surprised us by really eating up a storm. these chips were awesome, but it was joseph's reubin sandwich that really surprised me. this girl will barely touch chili if it isn't the right beans, or bread if it isn't store bought white. but hadley went to town on it, and her daddy gladly shared, and we both giggled the whole time.

sunday morning, we wanted to explore an area we'd read a little about, german village. i was hoping to find an original breakfast spot, but scrambler marie's was fast and easy, and new to us anyway. it was delicious. and hadley and joseph enjoyed many of these sweet breakfast kisses. 

i came across a blog written by a local girl, and one place she recommended as an awesome local find was this super amazing local book store, "the book loft." coming from portland, and powell's books, i was all over the idea of a crazy individual book store with room after room of books. while this was completely different, it was still kind of the same, and i felt at home, squeezing through the hallways wandering in the 32 room buliding turned book store. if you are ever in columbus, take a peek! 

next door to the book loft was this super cute little brick home. i don't usually take photos of other people's homes, i find it creepy. but this perfect little house made me want to move to columbus and live happily ever after. 

if you know us at all, you know that we 1. like local coffee shops and 2. always have to find a geocache:) while still in german village, we knocked both those off our to do list. next to the book store we found "cup o joe" and really, how could we not stop? pictured here is my mocha joe, which was as delicious as the joe i kiss every day. just a few block away, we read into an interesting geocache located near this amazingly creepy castle. i couldn't figure out from googling if you can actually tour this amazing building, but i do know that the top two floors are for rent as a penthouse for a mere $5900 a month. it. looks. amazing. the creepy part is, the man who built this back in the day was a little crazy, something about five floors of basement, sunbathed named, never wore shoes or cut his hair, people died upstairs in a fight, and the list goes on. i'd still live there, so long as i never had to go down to that basement.

just after we found that geocache, we realized joseph had monday off, but decided not to alter our plans to return home sunday evening. in fact, pregnant me and little hadley were pretty worn out, and we soon headed off to the car to make our way home. and on our way, surprise, surprise, we stopped at an old country cemetery for another geocache. it was freezing by then, but a great time of day for a photo or two. 

phew. that really was a lot for just over a day in columbus. we can't wait to visit again. such a beautiful city, and so nice to be among tall building where everyone is bustling around, enjoying the city on a warm winter weekend. 

xoxo, al