Ohio Observations

A few things I have learned / am trying to learn in our first month up here in Ohio:

1- Don't move to Ohio if you have Medcost Insurance or Beech Street. Just don't. Your on your own for the most part........

2- I've never thought of Ohio has windy....Ryan's co workers say it is just this time of year but I feel like I moved to Chicago! It is getting nice now that its a bit warmer...the wind keeps things feeling cooler but the first couple of weeks we were here...it was in the 40's with winds 20-30 all day and gusts up to 40 or 50! Where are we?

3- People don't have decks or patios up here! It seems to be a special add on if you have one. We are missing our deck to put toys / our patio set on. We had to sell our patio set b/c Ryan was not-so-happy having to move it all around each time he mowed the grass :) Speaking of grass, the state flower must be the dandelion weed. It is rampant up here - so much so that it appears most folks in our neighborhood have their lawns professionally treated. You can, um, certainly tell the ones that don't have their yards treated. (we were one of those yards for exactly 2 weeks before Ryan said no more!) :)

4- I am really missing Bojangles and Chickfila. There are 2 Chickfila's in all of Columbus...both about 25 minutes from us.

5- I don't know if this is an Ohio thing or not, but the Wendy's up here has a thing called Coca Cola Freestyle....its a drink machine that gives you 100+ drink mix options!!!! As in, Cherry Vanilla Coke, Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, Peach Sprite, Diet coke with Raspberry, Fanta with every other flavor added in, oh my! It has singly handedly increased our caffeine consumption 200%. And, let me just help you, if you find a place that has it, just get the Peach Sprite - amazing!

6- There are no U-turns allowed in the city. what? No wonder everyone looked at me very funny the first few days we were here...and they were all tight turns! haha no wonder. So if you miss your turn, you have to go find a left turn lane somewhere and make your way back.

7- The news station up here is obsessed with some Falcon that has laid eggs on top of their building. Every day they go to the "Falcon Cam" to see if the eggs are hatched. Yep. Really.

8- We are in love with our new grocery store...its called Giant Eagle. It seems like a mix of kroger, harris teeter and lowes. Get this, every certain amount of money you spend on your groceries gets you 10 cents off each gallon of gas if you fill up at one of their stations. The other day, we got 60 cents off per gallon our entire fill up! yes please. THEN if you buy your gas from one of their gas stations, you get a certain % off your grocery bill -so you get rewards either way you use them - grocery or gas! AND get this moms...they have FREE CHILDCARE for you to grocery shop. Too bad you have to be 3 yrs old so we can't take advantage of that yet, but how wonderful!

Well, that's what I've learned so far. If I can ever get out of the house with the twins, I'm sure we'll learn much more!