What am I buying?

Being in a new place makes even the tiniest things stand out, even if they are common place. For some reason the marketing/product design/value of some items have stood out to me the last few weeks.

First, Concord Foods, 'Smoothie' mix. The "JUST ADD" directions are what got me. It says, "JUST ADD: fresh strawberries, milk, and ice", So why am I buying a mix? Here is the website description since the picture is small: "Create your own thick, creamy smoothie with our Strawberry Smoothie Mix. Refreshing strawberries loaded with vitamins! Blended with strawberries, milk and ice, each packet contains enough mix to make 1 quart of delicious tasting smoothie. Use skim milk for a low fat option."

I did not buy this because I really couldn't see what I was getting from it.

Second, Galliker's Milk. We bought it because it was the only option at the little store we stopped at to get milk our first night, but the yellow jug almost had me going to another store. If there is one color I don't really want to associate my milk with it's yellow.

Anyone else observe any good/ odd items on the market lately?

Now and Then

I know you’ve been hearing a lot about this lately, but I’m trying to soak up and enjoy Pennsylvania as much as I can. I’m guessing this is the most amount of time I’ll be able to spend here in a very long time. Also, it’s been interesting to see what’s the same and what isn’t compared to 10 years ago when I was a permanent resident. So this entry is probably going to be incredibly boring for anyone who doesn’t have Ellsworth somewhere in their name, or who hasn’t lived in Marietta or Lancaster for 10+ years. If you don’t fall into one of those categories, I’m guessing you’ll be bored if you force yourself to read this. Or you could skim it and be slightly amused by what a country bumpkin I am.

Changed: Donegal Place. For those of you who don’t know, this is the dead end street I grew up on. A brick row of houses, surrounded by jungle-like, let your childhood imagination run wild, forest. The houses don’t look that different, it’s what’s across the street that has changed. Our old ruins and forts are actually well groomed. Brick walls aren’t covered in graffiti, there are no old tires laying around ready to give your short legs a boost up a tree, and the trails are mulched. It’s actually pretty nice. But it’s definitely different. The target audience is more like old couples that would like to go on strolls, as opposed to jungle children who would like to run wild. The Loner is even getting totally restored! I’ll take pictures.

Unchanged: The Food. Lebonon bologna, hamloaf, scrapple, shoofly pie, whoopie pie, red beat eggs, chow chow, funnel cake… They’re all still here in all their glory. Anthony’s fully embracing PA’s obsession with pretzels. So far we’ve had caramel pretzels, a sandwich with a pretzel bun, peanut butter filled chocolate covered pretzels, a pretzel dog, a pretzel the size of both of our heads put together, and now I just need to serve pretzels as an ice cream topper. Mmm.

I actually had normal scrapple for the first time ever the other day. It wasn’t anything like the deliciousness Mom makes every Christmas. I wouldn’t say it was absolutely disgusting, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was pleasant. It was the flavor of sausage but the texture of corn meal. Weird. On a sweeter note, Wilbur buds are still better than Hershey kisses.

Changed: Racial diversity. It’s about time. It’s nice to see that Marietta doesn’t seem quite as monochromatic as it used to be.

Unchanged: The weather. Still hot hazy and humid.

Changed: 441. It’s lined with townhouses, that apparently aren’t selling very quickly. There’s also a Disney world sized church that Ant calls the “Mega corn field Church.” The farmland next to Sheetz is up for sale as commercial space. :(

Unchanged: Marietta Day. I got a pair of cute, red shoes for $1. And as we were sorting through 50 cent baby clothes, we gathered four items and tried to pay two bucks. The guy smiled and said, “Eh, make it a dollar.” We told him he was a hard bargain.

There was a pretty good band playing, made up of kids maybe in their late teens. It was surprisingly folksy and simultaneously great music. We later overheard them telling friends they’d be playing at the Chameleon this weekend. Happy.

Unchanged: Mrs. Madsen…coolest high school art teacher ever. I saw her on Marietta day, she says hi to all of you Ellsworth girls out there. I don’t know if you know this, but all I had to do was mention my heritage as an Ellsworth and she exempted me from Intro to art.

Changed: No Marietta still doesn’t have it’s own grocery store, or traffic lights on its main (market) street, but it does have it’s own theatre company. It’s called the Susquehanna Stage Co., and it’s run by Jim Johnson the director of my high school musicals. It makes me happy. Also Unchanged: Nichole (one of my best friends from elementary, middle and high school), is playing in many of their productions, as she should.

Unchanged: Kindness. I strapped on Ira, and headed on a 3 mile walk with Anthony to go pick up our car from the shop. 3 miles isn’t particularly long for us, but we started getting nervous after the 1st mile when the grey skies turned black, and drizzle turned into GOLF BALL sized hail! This all happened rather quickly, so we turned around and sprinted, while dodging huge marbles from the sky. Anthony cried out “I’ve been hit,” as I continued to cover Ira’s head, and made it to the cover of Herr’s Market just as I was hit on the head. It mostly hurt my pride though. We and everyone in the market watched with awe. The ground was covered in white, and the hail falling made explosive splashes in puddles. We stalled for some time and finally picked up the offer of a persistent Samaritan who insisted on driving us to the auto shop. The storm had pretty much passed by then, but we weren’t sure if there would be another surprise attack or not. So nice. I still need to make her some brownies or something.

Changed: Park City. The Mall in Lancaster, not the city of Anthony’s origin. This caused for only slight confusion in the beginning of our relationship. Anyway, Park City looks so modern. They’ve somehow afforded a mega face lift since I’ve been there last…6 years ago? We were checking out phone deals there. Let us know if you have any suggestion on phones or phone companies you absolutely love.

Unchanged: Roots. Ant gave a great update on what this farmer’s market is like. If you haven’t been there for 10 or 15 years, it’s exactly the same. When we went to the Intercourse Amish/Mennonite Visitor’s Center, Anthony asked our Amish friend Sam, something about Roots. Sam didn’t know what we were talking about until it registered. “Oh, you mean ruts.” I apparently forgot how to really pronounce it.

Unchanged: The landmark donkey is still there. That’s right. Here in Lancaster county we don’t remember the names of roads, we instead give direction that sound something like this. “Turn left at the golf ball house, you’ll know it when you see it. Go straight for a while and then turn left at the donkey. This particular donkey (the one on Colebrook road next to the tree that swallowed the sign), has been there FOREVER! I thought he actually died because his little grazing area has been vacant for a while, but then Anthony discovered that he’s looking extremely old and hangs out in the back by his little shed. How will we give direction when he dies?

Unchanged: Lancaster 2nd Ward. There are loads of new faces, but the staples are still there: The Shaffers, Williamsons, Gubbins, Resslers, Merrises, Calverts, Herberts…and for not much longer the Pickets.

That was extremely long, but let me know if there’s something you’d like an update on that I didn’t cover. Love you!
Sharon

New born to Infant

So, I don't know when it happened, but Ira is defiantly no longer in the New Born category. Looking at him you can't help but notice how big he is getting. I thought I'd through a quick update out on him here are the highlights:

• He is a wonderful sport on all of our adventures we've been going on around here.
• He has been struggling to overcome his first diaper rash/ possible yeast infection. We're hoping it goes away soon.
• He loves mirrors! 
• He really likes making noises with his tongue on his lips, you know the spiting kind of noises.
• He rolled over from his stomach to his back for the first time

We're learning to get sleep when we can

We are reading to him more, he seems to like it

Our little narcissist

Roots Country Market

Sharon has always been telling me stories about this country market auction called Roots. It happens every Tuesday and is huge. All the Amish, Mennonites, and other farmers in the area bring their goods together and have a huge farmers market. There is a livestock auction where hens, chickens, etc are auctioned off and there is a produce/other goods auction. Beside the auctions there is a typical farmer market. There are buildings with stands where you can find many different goods from food to crafts. Some of the booths have been occupied by the same families for generations. It is a pretty neat experience with good prices for excellent produce and the like.

Sharon took me to the Pretzel Shop where she remembers getting pretzels as a little girl. Did I mention I love pretzels? Check out this huge pretzel they sold. We shared it for Lunch and Dinner.

Amish Country

Yesterday we headed out to Amish Country. We started the day out at Miller's all you can eat buffet. They had great food. We stopped by their quilt shop, which was amazing. I think my mom would have loved it, no I know she would. You had to wear gloves to handle any of the merchandise. All the quilts were hand stitched with complicated patterns.

After that we headed out on a loop through Paradise (Like in Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" song)

Sign me up

Intercourse (yes, that is the name of the town)

and Bird In Hand (yet another odd Amish town name).

We took a lot of back country roads and saw a bunch of farms with the Amish out plowing with their horses and their laundry hanging to dry. We also passed a bunch of horse drawn buggies. Why don't I have pictures? Well, since Mozambique I've been wrestling with taking pictures of other people's life styles as a tourist. How would you feel if people from all over the world came to stare at you like you were in a zoo and take pictures of you doing your everyday work, often times without your permission? What's so entertaining about it? It was also hard to find a place to pull over on the road to pull out a camera. It was nice to just drive through the community and experience it.
We also ran into a guy in the Intercourse visitor's center that was Amish and we talked for a long time, mostly about religion and the motivations and ideals that lead the Amish to live the way they do. He was old order Amish growing up, but recently left to be with what he called the, "Fellowship", which is a group of Amish that use cars and things. It was interesting that his motivations for leaving the Old Order were on the basis of his born again view of Christ and his atonement, not because of the lifestyle or strict use of technologies.

Wilbur Chocolate Company

We usually go to Hershey Chocolate World, but Sharon decided to show me a smaller chocolate operation, Wilbur Chocolate Co. They are famous around here for the Wilbur Bud, a Hershey Kiss type of chocolate treat. We talked with one of the chocolate workers in the 'tour' for about 45min. I personally liked it a little more than the Hershey experience, although Hershey is probably more appropriate for little children.

This place made me want to become a chocolatier and open a little confection store some day. I didn't really take pictures inside so we just have this family hoody picture outside. 

We had to stop at this cute diner across the street to try their traditional mixed fountain drinks. They were good. The owners were this cute old couple that used to come to the diner when they were little.

Gettysburg

We've been doing a lot of little day trips here was a fun one to Gettysburg.

Snyder's of Hanover: We went and got a tour of the pretzel factory for Snyder's of Hanover. I love pretzels and we are in Pretzel country. I learned they can make 7 tons of pretzels an hour running on full steam. Amazing.

Gettysburg: Sobering. The museum is pretty cool with tons of information. Driving around the cemeteries and seeing the lay of the land where the battle took place was interesting too.

Family Pictures

We have been liking this new show, Modern Family. We watch it on Hulu.com. Anyway, I couldn't resist putting up a clip from this weeks episode because it is all about family photo ops. If you enjoy the clip I recommend watching the whole episode.

May Day and Marietta Day

Sharon and I have had the opportunity to go out and enjoy a few of the local traditions in the area. Our first day here we went to Maytown to celebrate "May Day". It was the 250th anniversary of the founding of the town and so I got the feeling the celebration was a little bigger than in past years. There were a several events spanning several days. Most of the excitement toke place on a stage they had set up in the town square. There was a historical walk they had set up and a few tents selling some merchandise along with food stands where I was able to have real funnel cake, a local fried dough delight. The biggest tradition was the May Pole Dance, where young women hold ribbons and dance around the pole in a way that the ribbon braids itself down the pole. It wasn't really as exciting or technical as I had originally thought, but still fun from the traditional aspect.

Funnel Cake

May Pole Dance (There is another picture posted earlier by Sharon) 

Marietta Day on the other hand was completely different. I've been trying to think of a way to explain it. For those of you who might be familiar with Swiss Days held in Midway, UT, it is kind of like that, but more informal. It's basically a huge community spring clean/yard sale/fund raiser all in one big event.

The main street of the town, Market Street, is closed to traffic and people from all over the community just set up shop on the curb. From what I could tell all you have to have is some old stuff you want to sell. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There were people selling off their old children’s clothes, movies, books, CD's, car parts, fishing gear, tools, dentist equipment, etc.. There were some more professional/legitimate set ups too. There were also people selling art and photography, jewelry and the like. Of course you can't have an event like this without food. There were your carnival type trailer food offerings(again with Funnel cake), to your local high school sports teams selling brownies and everything in-between. To top it all off there were a few musical groups/bands sprinkled throughout doing performances. It really was an interesting commercial experience. We weren’t in the market for much, but we found some good clothes for Ira between $0.25 and $1.00 so we were happy.

Market Street on Marietta Day (This picture is worth examining closer)

Anyway, it's been fun to take part of some local community events. They really seem to bring people together. It's also great to finally have a point of reference for when Sharon brings up her childhood memories and can understand why they are such fond memories.

Outlets: The Real Deal

Anthony and I had an experience yesterday that involved going back to my roots and explaining some of my irrational shopping expectations.

I’ve never really liked shopping, at least as a past-time. I remember one of my friends in high school asking me if I wanted to “hang out at the mall” with him... And do what? Is there anything you absolutely have to buy? If not, why would you actually choose to be in a place like that? I went anyway, and it was kind of weird. We didn’t really do anything. We looked around in some shops and ate pizza in the food court. (Hmmm. The fact that this was so boring to me, probably means that I was the weird one. I'll save that for another post.)

In the Ellsworth family, shopping was different. Clothing shopping, for instance, was not a frequent or even an occasional social event. It was a once a year marathon at the Outlets. Now, my use of the term “outlet” needs clarification. I mean real factory outlets. Places where clothing companies sell their irregulars or surplus for insanely cheap prices. My frugal hopes have been dashed again and again as I’ve realized that many normal strip malls call themselves outlets, but don't have the same deals.

I don’t know why, but my home town is surrounded by these ‘real’ outlets. I remember going on trips to the Danskin outlet in York with some ballet friends. It was kind of a rundown building, something between a warehouse and a garage, but you could find leotards that would otherwise be sold for 30 bucks for just a couple. The $1 rack was the best. Maybe the fabric would be mismatched, or the legs of pants uneven, but hey! ONE DOLLAR! Yes, this is my kind of shopping.

That brings us to Reading PA. That’s right. Like the Monopoly Reading Railroad (And just to clarify it’s pronounced Redding). This is outlet country, and the best in the area are the Vanity Fair Outlets: 450,000 square feet of giant blocky factory buildings transformed into a bargain hunter’s heaven, a recovering shopaholics hell. Deals and the absence of sales tax on clothes in PA bring busses full of shop hungry tourists from New York every year. They spend days there.
After yesterday, I’ve realized it’s kind of insane to try and do it all in one day. We spent about 8 hours there and didn’t even cover half the stores. Prices are insane, we’re talking everything 50% off with select racks an ADDITIONAL 75% off, racks of cute cute shirts for $4.99 or less, buy one pair of shoes, and get 2 additional pairs free, and my favorite, the $1.98 bin. And it’s not like they’re selling nerd uniforms or something. These are brands like Nautica, Van Heusen, Carter’s, Bass etc. etc.

Taking Anthony there helped me realize that my childhood and adolescent shopping in this place has made me the overly picky shopper that I am today. I almost always have irrational expectations. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been shopping, I’ll see something I like, Ant will talk me into trying it on… It looks great! I love it! I look at the price tag again, and say something like, “Fourteen bucks? Eh, maybe if it were 2 dollars. Well, maybe 5.” He thought I was crazy, and now he knows that I’ve just been spoiled. In the end we spent a little more than planned, but my mom’s voice kept popping into my head, “You can’t buy the material for that price!” and “We’re making out like bandits!” And now that I've gotten what I need, I hopefully won't have to go shopping again for a year...or maybe two. We'll see how it goes.

Late Mothers Day

I know it's a little late to be posting something for Mothers Day, but really everyday we should appreciate our mothers. I stumbled on this video today and thought many of you out there would also appreciate it.

Catch Up

I've been doing a lot of catch up lately, but not enough keeping up on the blog. We got a new camera and I started taking a ton more pictures. I decided before things got too out of hand I needed to organize all our past photos. This morning I finished labeling and organizing our photos from the last seven years. I wanted to post a bunch, but it would be out of control. I have neglected the blog while focusing on this project, so I need to catch up. Enjoy the pictures of our adventures over the last few weeks.

 Conference weekend was spent in Niagara Falls, New York with the Romero's (Sharon's sisters' family). We had fun going on walks/hikes and exploring the area. This is a picture of Sharon and her sister on a hike by the river and a picture of Ira when we were at Lake Ontario.

After Niagara we headed south to Washington DC and were able to catch the Cherry Blossoms. They were beautiful. We got some fun family pictures.

The weather in Pittsburgh was nice and we were able to make it out to a Pirates (Baseball) game. It was a good game too, we won it at the very end of the game. We had Ira dressed up in his Pirate uniform we got.

At the end of April our apartment contract was up and so, sadly, we have left Pittsburgh. We've kept to the right of the country and have migrated East to Marietta for the month of May. Sharon's parents are letting us use their place while we wait for what's next.

We've been having fun here, I'll post more on that next.

Mothers Day

Hi Fam,
Happy Mother's Day!

Lots has happened since I last wrote. Ant and I celbrated 3 years of marriage by getting a babysitter and going to the movies... Alice in Wonderland in 3D. I loved it. It reminded me of how obsessed I use to be with Alice growing up, and how I've related to her a lot growing up, so now I'm re-reading the Anotated Alice and loving it. Being married to Ant is a blast. It seems to get better and better each year.
We went to a Lamaze reunion...which is really just an opportunity to tell your birth story and answer questions to the pregos currently taking the class. Ant and I were one of four couples who showed up to tell the story, and we were the only ones who seemed to have the birth experience we wanted. A scarey contrast was a couple who's experience seemed identical-almost. 1 1/2 cm for about 16 hours. 7 cm at 24 hours...started pushing...monitor picking up uneven heartrates...and then this is where our

stories diverge. Ours went that, my midwife could tell the difference between my and Ira's heartrate and took off the monitor. Pushed without drugs, and recovered quickly. This other woman, got an emergency c-section, and still can't feel below her belly button! Perhaps it was entirely essential. And the most important thing is that we both have beautiful, healthy babies. But it made me happy that I had a good midwife and husband to help me through it all.

Our summer of being nomads has begun. We packed up our stuff, said farewells to church and work friends (includeing my preschool students) and shipped out. This is the first time that Ant has had a substantial amount of time in Lancaster, so it's been fun trying to figure out how to be a tourist in my home town. So far we've spent Mayday in Maytown, gone to Root's farmers market, Gettysburg (which has a totally knew and improved museum by the way), and a free tour of the Snyder's pretzel factory. Saturday we went down to the temple and met up with our Pittsburgh ward to see a friend go through for her first time. Very cool. It's also been fun to catch up with some of my closest friends from growing up. Life is good.

Ira is amazing. He is scooting around a little, and has figured out how to pick up things and put them in his mouth. While he's taking a nap, I often find him sucking his thumb. He's a pretty big flirt, and loves making eye contact with just about everyone. We're a little worried about his rash though. The doctors in Pitt told us he had a yeast infection, and told us to use this pretty expensive anti-fungal creme for it to go away in a couple of weeks. It's been 2 1/2 weeks and it's smoothened out, but the red has is spreading up past his nipples and down past his knees! sigh... We're thinking maybe it's eczema? Anyway, let us know if you have any thoughts or advice. We're going to see if our insurance will cover an appointment here. But prayers would be helpful.
Alright, gotta go. We love you! 


Sharon