DeBuck's Pumpkin Patch & Nana and Dubby Visit

Usually about a week and a half before Halloween, we head to a local pumpkin patch and pick out a pumpkin to carve with Brady.  In his three Halloweens, we haven't been to the same pumpkin patch twice with all of our moving around.  It also worked out nicely that my parents decided to come visit this weekend, which was when we were going to pick out our pumpkin.  We moved away when Brady was 5 months old, so they've never been able to experience many of these things with him.  It was really special that they could be here and watch him pick out his pumpkin.

 Nana and Dubby on the hayride waiting for the tractor to pull us to the pumpkin patch.

 Brady decked out in his jack o lantern shirt ready to pick out a pumpkin.

We had a little incident while looking through all the pumpkins.  We even have it on video where Brady points me in the other direction and I head off to check out the pumpkins.  Then he turns around and steps in an open rotten pumpkin.  This kid is sneaky and tons of trouble!  This is him sitting on the pumpkin I found for him.  It was HUGE!

Don't let the size fool you, it outweighs Brady by about 14lbs!  He weighs around 30lbs and this pumpkin weighed in around 44lbs.  It's by far the biggest pumpkin we've ever picked.

This year, with our new addition, we decided to get a pumpkin for the new baby.  We told Brady that his pumpkin could be as big as Daddy could carry and that he could pick one for the baby that he could carry.

Back on the hayride with our pumpkins securely loaded on board.

We stopped to view a bald eagle's nest in a tree on the property.  Brady was more interested in the baby's pumpkin.

Once we got back to the main area they had carts that you could use to get your pumpkins to the weighing station and then your car.  Usually we pay the admission to do the other activities at a patch, but it was past 3PM and way past Brady's naptime when we got there, so we got the pumpkins and headed home.

The remainder of Saturday was spent relaxing.  Brady fell asleep on the car ride home and went immediately to bed when we got there.  We turned on the TV and vegged out in front of football.  It was a pretty decent weekend for all of our teams.  Sometimes we can go a whole season without Pitt, Penn State, and the Steelers all winning in the same weekend, but they pulled it off this weekend, so no grumpiness on Monday morning.  While I was staying at my parents' this summer, I was watching the food network and saw Rachel Ray cook an amazing beef wellington with blue cheese and watercress instead of pate. I made a mental note to have Andy try it sometime.  With my parents visiting, it was the perfect opportunity and it was amazing!  We were all stuffed at the end and realizes that half of a wellington is enough for one person, so we can cut the recipe in half next time.

Sunday morning, we headed to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.  We had been in March 2011 when we visited for a conference Andy attended, but several exhibitions were under construction.  It was free that day because it was the museum's 83rd birthday.  It houses amazing historical artifacts.  Above is the limousine in which JFK was shot in Dallas, TX.

A side shot of the JFK limousine.  They modified it in 1964 to add a reinforced steel top, so it would no longer be a convertible leaving a president open to attack.

Eisenhower's limousine

FDR's limousine

Teddy Roosevelt's house drawn buggy

A huge steam locomotive.  I put Andy and Brady in to show the scale of how large it was.

A coal powered locomotive.  Brady was in heaven with all the cars and trains.

Check out the snow plow on the front of this train.

The chair from the Ford Theatre in which Abraham Lincoln was shot.  You can still see the blood stains on it.

They have a weinermobile, so they also have a bun and toppings so you can lay in it and be the hotdog.  Brady thought this was pretty cool.  He was 13 months the last time we went, so he didn't do much.

Just relaxing.

Even though Andy had raked the leaves the weekend before, in the course of a week our yard was covered in leaves again.  We decided after the museum to rake them up and let Brady jump in them again with Nana and Dubby watching before we got rid of them.  It was much drier this time, but of course the leaves at the bottom were still soaking wet.

Dubby kept using the rake to pile more leaves on top of Brady.

Brady completely buried in the leaves.

They both got a kick out of throwing Brady into the leaves.  I managed to catch a great shot of Dubby and Brady in mid-swing.

Brady's turn to rake.

Brady was such a good boy and stopped playing to tell us he had to go potty.

We were so grateful my parents made the effort to come out and visit us.  Most of the rest of our families don't realize how expensive it is for us to come home, but expect us to always be the ones coming to them.  It's quite an effort and takes a lot of planning for us to come home and we usually only do so when there is a reason.  With the new baby, we will be traveling home less and less because the memories of driving out here when we first moved when Brady was 4 months old is more than enough to deter us while this baby is young.  Fortunately, my parents and brothers are willing to come to us and we will host our first Thanksgiving just one month from today.  It's a rare treat to have all of us together and we're sure to have a good time.

Fall Fun & Buks Visits

It's been kinda quiet around here, with trying to get everything put away.  We're not all the way there yet, but it's getting closer and now that it's mid-October, our activities are starting to pick up a bit more.  Behind our house is a very wooded nature preserve, so we have tons of leaves falling daily.  It great disturbed Brady in the beginning.  I'm not going to lie, it disturbs me too.  Although it's nice for Brady to experience the changing of the seasons, I miss South Carolina where the leaves didn't fall until almost Christmas and were back on the trees by the beginning of March.

Andy had been wanting to rake the leaves for over a week, but we kept getting rain.  I also wanted him to wait during dry patches because if it rained once they were made into a pile, it would be harder to dry and might get kinda gross before Brady had the chance to jump into them.  Andy's Uncle Buks came to visit last weekend and both days called for rain.  He decided he didn't care anymore, went out and got a rake, and raked up the wet leaves into a pile.  I was very against Brady jumping into a wet pile of leaves, but I got outvoted.  The poor kid was soaked when he came back in.

 When we first took him out, he was slightly apprehensive because he'd never had a chance to jump into a pile of leaves before and didn't know what we wanted him to do.

 A little further . . .

 I think in order to get him into the middle, Buks picked him up and threw him in.  He also jumped into the leaves with Brady.

By this point, it had started to rain.  I took the cameras in the house, but the boys decided to stay out and play.  Andy captured a few more shots with his phone.

 A nice shot of Brady in the leaves with the back of the house in the background.

 The last time Brady was in leaves was October 2010, when he was a little over 7 months old.  We were living in Michigan in an apartment complex.  One day, we came home from Gymboree and I noticed a bunch of brilliantly colored leaves under a tree on the side of the building.  I took a few quick pics of him.

We did more than just play in the leaves while Buks visited.  Brady coaxed him into the basement to show him is bike.  We intend for it to be a playroom, but at the moment are in the process of clearing radon from the area and I'm not comfortable letting him spend long periods of time down there until we have a clear reading.  We figured this would be a good time to put together Brady's Cars track that he got for his birthday.  I had bought the main track and a few accessories, but we soon realized when putting it together in Germany we needed an expansion pack to add the accessories.  I bought the expansion pack when we got home, so we figured we had everything we needed.  Wrong.  We needed two more expansion packs to make it work.  I ordered them Friday night, but we put the original track together so that Buks and Brady could play.

 The extra expansion packs came on Monday morning and Brady couldn't stop talking about his track all day.  As soon as Andy came into the house, Brady was all over him to put together his track.  Above he's pictured with the finally completed track having a great time.

 Saturday morning, Buks ran out and grabbed some Timbits from Tim Horton's.  They don't have any in Pittsburgh and he loves getting them when he's in Canada.  We're not too far from Canada, so we have plenty here.  He loved that he could introduce them to Brady.  I was still in bed, but according to Andy, Brady is waving his finger saying mommy can't have any lol.

Brady had been talking about Buks coming the whole week leading up to his arrival.  He calls him Big Frankie, but mostly Frankie.  Every night when I put him to bed, he'd ask if Frankie was coming in the morning.  I'd tell him how many more days.  On Friday, it was the big day and I told him that Frankie would be there after nap.  Of course, he decided to take a short nap that day and Frankie didn't come until an hour later.  When he got there, Brady was jumping up and down and couldn't get enough of him.  They were pretty much inseparable.  We don't have any illusions that Buks comes to visit to see us.  It's all about Brady and getting as much face time with Brady as possible.  Above you can see Brady eating with Buks.  They really had a blast together.  He left early Monday morning, but we made sure to tell Brady before he went to bed that Frankie would be gone in the morning.  He understands when we tell him on certain nights that Daddy will be at work in the morning, so he wasn't upset when he woke up and Buks was gone.  He immediately switched gears and started asking about Nana and Dubby who are coming this weekend.

The Starbucks Index

During our travels abroad, Andy mentioned early on, something called the Big Mac Index.  Basically, the price of a Big Mac in any given city would in turn show how expensive that city is compared to others.  Since I don't eat Big Macs, I decided that I would index how expensive it was for me to go to Starbucks in various cities we visited.  I normally get a venti chai tea latte, so that's what I recorded the price for in each city.  Below I've listed them from least expensive to most expensive.



USA - $4.19
Stuttgart - 4.40 € ($5.72)
Prague - 115 kc  ($5.75)
Munich - 4.50€ ($5.85)
Vienna - 4.60 € ($6.09)
Paris - 4.95€ ($6.44)
Zurich - 7.35 Swiss francs ($7.94)



As you can see, it's the least expensive here in the States.  The problem we encounter in Europe is that the US dollar is weaker than the Euro and other European currencies.  The exchange rate changes daily based on global markets and projections, so every day our US dollar was worth a different amount.  During our stay, in order to get 1 Euro, it varied anywhere from $1.34 to $1.23.  The last time the Euro and the US dollar were equal at 1 was during July 2002.  Before that, the dollar was stronger than the Euro.  Also remember, that although the Euro was introduced in 1999 and not made the legal tender of all countries involved until January 1, 2002.  Another interesting point is that in Europe, there's a 20% luxury tax included in these prices.  Imagine paying 20% tax on pretty much everything except groceries.

You can easily see that in Zurich, my Starbucks was the most expensive, close to double what I pay here in the States.  Zurich is one of the most expensive cities in the world.  Although the Swiss franc is very close in its exchange with the dollar, there is a reason why it's so much more expensive when we compare it to our Starbucks.  When we were there, Andy's friend, Nadia, explained that minimum wage in Switzerland is 25 francs (which equivalent to over $25).  Their prices are based on how long it takes for someone to earn that much.  So since our minimum wage is less than $10, it would take someone about half an hour to earn the amount it would cost to go to Starbucks.  For them, their minimum wage is higher, thus they earn more in half an hour.  It evens out in the end depending where you live.

This was something cool I wanted to share with all of you because when you travel, you probably think the price difference is due to the exchange rate not being in our favor.  It was fun to learn the real reason.