way back wednesday

@ 4 months

@ 21 months.

time is definitely flying by! as you can see, he's a little less prone to letting mommy have her way. i'm sure it's a sign of what's yet to come.

slope slider

so the boy has already gone sledding three times this winter. i mean three separate weekends where we've had fresh snow. and this is not including christmas weekend. (i was too lazy to bundle him up for two minutes of sledding that weekend.) we really can't tell how he feels about the activity. he seems to be indifferent. at least at first. i'm pretty sure by the end of the season he'll be sledding down on his own. :)

you would think living in the mountains people would be prepared for this much snow. but apparently we live in the "south" and this is a ridiculous amount. poor kids, i think they'll be attending school well into the summer to make up for all the snow days they've had.

we are definitely having a white winter. surprisingly enough i'm not sick of it yet. ask me again in a month. the man, on the other hand, has been looking at beach vacations this week. anniversary in the caribbean this year! thanks snowy winter!

taste the rainbow

Friday Avery and I attended a mommy and me class. the activity of the morning: painting. Avery was no joke, got down and dirty with the big kids. we both had a good time playing in the paint and meeting new friends.

blogging from my phone as I'm feeding little man. way to multitask. got an iTunes giftcard last christmas so I thought I'd go ahead and use it for the blogging app.

snow day 2009

aaron got off work a little early today so we were able to enjoy the snow. i think some of us had way too much fun. :) we got some sledding in and built a mini-snowman. tomorrow we're going skiing in the a.m. i'm a little excited about it, it'll be our first time out this year. hopefully it won't be too painful. check out some more snow day 2009 photos.

are you ready for some football?

quick weekend recap. friday aaron got home a little early and we were able to make the 5 o'clock showing of "choke" at the dragonfly theater. boone's first brew and view. we've been meaning to check it out but there really hasn't been a movie we've both wanted to see til now. this might be the way we do movies on the big screen. we were very impressed with the setup. you can eat and drink full meals in the actual theater. there are about 10 rows of chairs and tables and the front row is lined with couches. we ate dinner while we watched, pretty neat.

as far as the movie goes, very sexually graphic. i'm a big fan of chuck palahniuk novels and had read this one a while ago. i kinda forgot what it was about, but it all came flooding back as i watched. i'd say the movie is a pretty close representation of the book. so if you like the book, you'll probably like the movie.

saturday we headed over to watch a little app state football. rarely do i go. but since jerome was out of town, i caved and went with. i actually had a good time despite the 40 degree temps. here you can see josef the mountaineer riding in on his hog. we were just waiting for that head to come flying off. surprisingly, it didn't.

aaron doesn't mind explaining the game to me which he pretty much did the whole time. it was a good game to watch, app. state beat furman 26-14. i probably won't be going to any more games this year. the weather plays a huge factor in if i'll attend. i just really don't like it enough to endure the cold, snow, rain, etc. the next game is friday night, halloween. aaron and jerome plan on dressing up for it. now we're scrambling to find costumes. i've got an idea...now to make it happen...hmmm.

yesterday we did a little geocaching and started to attack the basement storage mess.

and as you can see, aaron did bring home a copy of the als walk team.

where the worms are so woolly

another jam-packed weekend for the westphals.

saturday we headed over to winston-salem for the als walk. we were quite surprised at how large the crowd was, easily twice as large as the walk in springfield. what was really great. thursday afternoon we found out we'd have a group of office staff walking with us. they even had t-shirts made for the event. it was great having so much support for such a worthy cause. we were both touched that everyone drove and hour and half both ways to walk. thanks everyone we truly appreciate it!!

unfortunately, i wasn't able to get any photos. we decided to bring the dogs along and i had a hard time corralling them and taking photos. i think someone did take a group photo, so hopefully i can get my hands on it sometime in the near future.

yesterday, we headed over to banner elk for the 31st annual woolly worm festival. it was a kinda cheesy event but apparently a must see/do in the area. it was a gorgeous day, so we didn't mind and actually enjoyed ourselves. (see photo above) we caught a few woolly worm races, drank some lemon shake-ups and listened to some bluegrass.

tomorrow i'm hoping to get some geocaching in. geocaching? what's that? yeah, it's been way too long since we've done any. yesterday i was hoping to get a few in while we were at the festival. unfortunately, i forgot the gps when heading out the door. i've got some new ones programmed in and if weather is permitting we'll get them done tomorrow. i wonder if there's any in jamaica. hmmmmm.

fall is finally here

we've had a busy, busy october. and it doesn't look like it's gonna slow down, at least not for a little while. last weekend we headed back to illinois to help celebrate mark's 60th birthday. a quick lowdown on where we were and who we were with.

saturday we stayed with the caraways. we visited a local pumpkin/apple farm with the kids, had a great steak dinner jason grilled up and then autumn and i proceeded to kick the boys butts in a game of trivial pursuit. we rule at 90's trivia.

sunday we headed over to jim and joyce's new abode for mark's surprise party. all of the boys were able to make it and even jay flew in from california to help celebrate. we got to see lots of family we hadn't seen in a long time, especially on aaron's mom's side. it was so great seeing everyone and meeting some new friends. matt and kristin announced that baby number two is on it's way! congrats!!

sunday evening we headed back to murphysboro to check out nate and katie's new home. it's super cute and so them! congrats to you guys! we did a little shopping monday for katie's new nieces and then headed home tuesday.

this past weekend has been packed full of activity as well. friday we went out with jill, jerome, todd and michelle for a belated birthday dinner for aaron. saturday we headed up to tweetsie railroad to check out the ghost train and all the other halloween festivities they had going on. the weather was perfect and we had a spooktacular time. today we headed up to sugar mountain for their make-shift octoberfest. rode up the chair lift for the second time this year. we laughed at how we've ridden it more without snow than with. it had gorgeous views and the leaves are in full color now. a definite plus in the high country.

here's the flickr set with all the photos we've taken so far. next week we head to winston-salem for the als walk.

gotta go. brian just texted me to play mariokart. man, i haven't played in forever.

snow bunnies

yesterday we hit up appalachian ski mountain. we had decided to take a 10:45 snowboard lesson but didn't get our equipment rented in time so we took the 1:30 class instead. we had planned on taking the one hour lesson and then putting what we learned to the test for the rest of the afternoon. good thing it didn't work out that way. after taking the lesson we were completely wiped out. everyone kept telling us, if you've ever surfed, skateboarded you'll have no problem snowboarding. yeah, if you've ever done it with your legs completely backwards and duct taped to the board.

i think we did okay considering neither one of us had ever done it before. we had a couple of spills, nothing major, which was really surprising. our instructor had us running up the hill with board attached over and over again. it's not as easy as it sounds and we both worked up a sweat pretty fast. we did have our own instructor who gave us one-on-two attention, so that was nice. after an hour we were able to toe turn, heel turn, stop and ride up on a tow rope. it was good to get the fundamentals from a pro. after the lesson we were going to practice some more but we were too tired and decided to call it a day. i actually went to bed at a decent hour last night, in fact, super early 10pm.

we had a good day and i'm excited to go again. it'll have to wait til after san antonio. i'd love to go again this weekend but after seeing how crowded it was on a tuesday there's no way aaron's gonna brave the weekend crowd. he hates busy places, i don't know if he remembers what disney is like. he may be in for a shock.

making the lists

in case you missed it. an article was recently brought to my attention. thanks, aly. read more here: america’s 10 best outdoor towns

"the mountaineers are a win away from an unprecedented third straight national championship." aaron almost had a conflict of interest. it could have been siu vs. asu in the championship game. unfortunately siu lost to deleware last night. not much of a football fan but go mountaineers!!

"...these towns have not only back doors to some of the country’s best adventure terrain, but also lively, livable communities that are dedicated to playing in and preserving the great american playgrounds."

stuffed sushi

another night out with the ladies. tonight we hit up pao! ordered 6 rolls, 2 orders of calamari, 5 salads, 1 gourmet pizza, 1 pao chicken, 2 bottles of wine, 8 strawberry mojitos and 3 different desserts. perhaps the best meal ever! i wish would have started "girls night" sooner. less than 2 weeks and i'll be a north carolinian.

where will be the next two weeks?? let me tell you. tomorrow morning we head to stl to meet up with some of aaron's med school buddies for one last harrah. later we'll head over to matt and kristin's for a fam/friend's going away party. sunday, rest. monday morning aaron wants to teach me how to be a histologist, monday night back to stl for the police concert. tuesday, recover. wednesday cards game with the caraways. thursday, last ortho appt. (nope not getting them off before we move! boo!) friday, another going away party thrown by the langeis/semens for us. saturday, another cards game. sunday-tuesday get house ready for movers. wednesday, movers pack up the house. thursday, movers load our stuff and at 2:30 we close on the springfield house. then we're boone bound. damn, i'm getting tired just thinking about it. or it could be the food settling in. mmmmm.