A Trip to Pittsburgh

A couple of weeks ago, while my parents were visiting, we took a trip to West Virginia/Pennsylvania to visit Uncle Kyle. We spent the full day we all had there in Pittsburgh, a city we all enjoyed. One of our first stops was a spice store called Penzey's Spices. It was probably one of my favorite places in the city and was full of every herb and spice imaginable!


We wandered around a little before lunch. Although Pittsburgh definitely isn't in the best shape, it's obvious it was a beautiful city at one time and is in the process of being returned (maybe?) to its former glory. There were some beautiful details in the not-so-new parts, though.


My dad had heard about this sandwich place called Primanti Bros., so since we were in the area, we decided to try it out. (That's my dad in the lower right-hand corner.)


The sandwiches were huge and contained all of the sides, including the french fries and coleslaw!


And Sophie decided to use her french fries as chopsticks...


After lunch, we headed over to the Monongahela Incline to see what the view beheld.


It was worth the ride in the un-air-conditioned funicular:


Grandma and Grandpa treated us to ice cream after a hot afternoon. Sophie enjoyed hers, as usual.


But I think she enjoyed playing with Grandpa more!

A Day at the Park

Well, I had the best of intentions for getting pictures posted here and at the Wilsons in Europe blog, but it has just been so crazy at work and at home the last couple of weeks. These pictures are from last weekend at Millenium Park in Danville. Sophie hadn't been here since before we moved to France, and we thought she'd like the large playground, the paths, and the lake with ducks. (Some of you may remember this park as the place where we celebrated Sophie's first birthday.)

We started at the playground, where Sophie had fun climbing everything in sight:


Eventually, we moved to feeding the ducks.


And then we got a little bike-riding practice in. The paths here are much flatter than our driveway, so it was a little less scary for her. She got the hang of pedaling a few times, but then would accidentally step on the brake and stop! She gets frustrated really easily with the bike, so we'll just keep practicing when we can.


And finally, on our walk around the lake, we spotted this crane (or heron?). It was fun to see other animals besides the ducks, including some turtles that live there.

Hopefully, there are more pictures to come soon. At the very least, things will slow down a bit in a week or so...

Fishing with Uncle Kyle

So, it's been a while since we've posted here, and I wanted the first post to be Sophie's first day at pre-school pictures, but since those pics are at work, I thought this post would be better than nothing! We visited Uncle Kyle in Pennsylvania (along with Grandma and Grandpa Fine) this last weekend, and Sophie would not let Uncle Kyle forget that he had promised that he'd take her fishing long ago. He ended up buying her the cutest little starter fishing kit with princesses all over it! She didn't catch anything, but if the amount of mud on her was any indication, she had a great time!