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