The Babbitts

Noodles from Scratch

Nora and Greg cooking up a storm. Homemade egg noodles. And the best part had to be when Nora, getting ready for bed, unprompted, looked up at him and said, 'Daddy, my favorite part of the day was making noodles from scratch with you.'

The Christmas Dress

Hand made by Granny D for little Callie back in 198X... still beautiful after all this time. Nora wore for Christmas Eve services while visiting the Babbitt's in Ohio, but this picture is from our new church in Rochester (Downtown United Presbyterian), beautiful old building with amazing stained glass and organ. We're planning to join in January.

Another one of those 'if it get's really quiet' moments

Elmo, again

Maybe it was providential that Nora's old Elmo costume (see Halloween post 2007) didn't sell at our yardsale before we left Arizona. And maybe it was meant to be that I didn't find a 'pumpkin costume' on craigslist right away. Because after a month of talking about being a pumpkin for Halloween, Nora switched gears and locked in on being Elmo again. Greg was a variation on his typical "bug with big hair that escaped from the natural history museum" costume, but apparently scared a few neighbors as the only adult who dressed up to take their kid trick or treating.

My favorite corner

I mentioned our new (rental) house in my last blog, and wanted to add pictures, since my mom hasn't seen our house yet (she saw the first rental house aka the "lead paint" house and had to leave before we moved again). Here is a picture of my favorite part of our tiny (1000 sq ft/no basement) house (aka apartment with a yard). A sunny corner and the well-loved rocking chair. But as much as I joke about the house being small, I actually really love it. It is very cozy and has a good vibe. Plus I'm hoping small = not as expensive to heat in the winter.

Nora likes the rocking chair too. Note that this picture was taken soon after moving here in August - even though Nora would still wear a tank top now if she could, we've finally packed away all the summer clothes...

Fall

Fall is here; we're settled (most of the boxes are unpacked) in a cute house in Brighton - a suburb of Rochester; I'm well underway to having my first quarter as a professor under my belt; and things are finally organized enough to Blog...

So this one is about the leaves- our first fall watching leaves change colors and fall.

Our trip to the Grand Canyon

Here comes a long, but very overdue blog...

After 3 years living in Arizona, it took an imminent move back to the East coast to get us motivated to go up to the Grand Canyon. We had a great trip, more below...

All ready to go, loaded in the car with all the friends...

First stop, Flagstaff and the Lowell Observatory. This is the tomb of Percival Lowell, the astroner who observed canals on Mars and did some of the work leading up to discovery of Pluto. Very cool place, Greg liked it so much, that he went back a few weeks later to see a night viewing of Saturn...

Come on mom and dad, yall are too slow... We decided to go in the East entrance of the South Rim and were able to avoid most of the masses of humanity that come in the more usual entrance at the Grand Canyon Village...