Category Archives: FAMILY TIME

Utah Trip | The Trost Family 2014 Pumpkin Carving Night

Every year my dad plants a bunch of pumpkins in his garden. Then one night in October everyone gets together and, he brings whatever has grown for the grandkids (and all their parents) to carve. We aren’t always in Utah for this tradition but definitely love participating when we are! 🙂

The grandkids all have a lot of fun selecting their pumpkin, choosing their design, etc.

This year, Titan decided to go with a Sonic design. Shocking, right?! In the picture above he is describing to Broc how it should all go down…

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October was a very busy month for us in 2014! Not only is it my most favorite month of the year (and so I cram a lot into the month anyway) but we were also able to spend about two weeks of the month in Utah visiting friends, blessing Chayse and doing a TON of really fun activities!

All of those posts are on their way, but first I thought I’d put up our typical Month in Review post. So this post is basically all of the photo’s that didn’t fit into the fifteen other posts I have to get up from October 2014! (I know, I know…I’m like 6 months behind!)

And the photo overload starts now… 🙂

At the beginning of the month we decided to try out a restaurant that was recommended by our neighbor called Mama Randazzo’s. It’s a little ma and pa type Italian restaurant over in Altoona, PA. Apparently Sal’s Six Packs (which is basically a beer and bevarage store) which is right next door to the restaurant is owned by the same owners and so the two places are connected. As we pulled up Titan’s first words were, “Um guys! I don’t know about this. Look at all those beer signs!” LOL He thought we were going into Sal’s Six Packs!

Once we convinced him that we weren’t going in the beer place, but rather to get some pizza or other yummy italian food, he finally was ok getting out of the car.

This place was definitely an older place but their portions were huge and the food was really yummy! The picture of the calzone above was HALF of their medium calzone. We started out ordering a large and the waitress quickly explained to us that a medium would probably be sufficient!

My two cuties waiting for dad to get home from an all night shift at the hospital! I saw Chayse’s adorable headband and glittery spider leg warmers for sell through an online shop and couldn’t resist getting them for the month of October! Especially since all of October she was still in her Pavlik Harness. Her super cute “I’m FABOOLOUS” onsie was surprisingly a $3.00 Walmart find. Loved the saying and the super cute polka dot sleeves!

Baby girl getting kisses from dad after his long shift! We LOVE hearing his keys in the door after he’s been gone on a 16 hour shift!

A quick picture I snapped at the beginning of the month as everything here in PA started to change color. We missed the peak of the changing colors when we were in Utah but, all in all, what we did get to see was gorgeous! I still can’t believe how lush and green it is here in PA. Definitely different for someone like myself who grew up in the desert that is Utah!

Shopping with the little man at our most favorite grocery store here in PA. We love ALDI! Titan was looking over the ad as I was checking out to make sure we hadn’t missed anything on our list. I love taking him with me because I can tell him what we need while we are driving there and 9 times out of 10 he can remember the list perfectly while we are in the store. No need for a day planner or written out list when he’s around. 🙂

I went to make eggs one morning and realized our egg carton had a scripture on it. “This is the Day which is the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” – Made my morning!

Another thing I was loving in October…lots and lots of hot chocolate with some french vanilla creamer mixed in! So yummy! Our Cocoa Motion basically had a permanent spot on our counter all month long.

Twice a year in April and then again in October our church has General Conference and I almost always make a batch of blueberry muffins that Sunday morning. In fact, we’ve probably had them so many times, now we could probably start calling it a tradition. 🙂

October is also the month of our anniversary! This year it was our 8th anniversary. For our anniversary we (and the kids) went to dinner at a mexican restaurant we’d been told was good (it wasn’t! but it was nice not to cook that night!) and then made a trip to Coldstone for dessert and to Toys R Us for some browsing for Titan! Things sure do change when you start adding more kids to the picture! 😉 (At this time Chayse was still exclusively nursing so she couldn’t be left with a babysitter for very long and if we were taking her along, we figured Titan may as well join us too!)

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Chayse checking out her photos while we pass more time in the Mother’s Room at church. This girl…she cracks me up!

When we left for Utah, this tree was still 100% green. Coming back from Utah though two weeks later, we were greeted with this gorgeous and bright yellow tree! So pretty and such a fun surprise!

Each year I try to pick up a couple new Halloween books to read all month long. Over the years our collection has grown quite nicely. Little did I know, Titan would want to read every single one almost every night! LOL

And here is a quick shot of what our front entry looked like a day or so after we got back from Utah! I debated posting this, but this is real life at our house! 🙂 We got in at like 2:00am and just dropped everything in the entry. Then, the next morning it was back to work for both Broc and I, and back to a normal schedule just in general which doesn’t leave a lot of room for spending an hour or two unpacking. So yes, this is what our front entry looked like for 2-3 days until I could get all the laundry sorted out, the pumpkins back on the front porch and everything just back where it belongs.

Titan’s birthday is the first week of November so the last week of October he requested a visit to Game Stop to check out their games and to do some window shopping in anticipation of some birthday money he knew was coming he way. As you can see, he takes his window shopping quite seriously! 🙂

Ti Guy, our little man that is/was 5 going on 25! (I say was because’s he’s 6 1/2 now that I’m typing this up in May! LOL) It was killing me how grown up he was looking in his flip flop and jeans checking out the games. Pretty sure this site won’t change much between now and his teen years! We definitely have a gamer on our hands!

The lighting is awful in this photo, but I couldn’t resist. My adorable little work buddy every morning. She loved laying on the boppy looking up at mommy work and I loved looking down and seeing her sweet face!

Titan had been requesting chocolate chip cookies for weeks and I just never quite had the time to make them from scratch. So it was Pillsbury cookie dough to the rescue one afternoon! Love how they even have themed cookies for each holiday and that all I have to do to make them is pop them on a cookie sheet!

Broc’s grandma always puts together really cute treat boxes for all of her grandkids (and now great grandkids) for Halloween! Chayse was of course too young for candy in October and so she very nicely sent Chayse a new toy rattle in her treat box and Titan couldn’t wait to show it to Chayse.

Baby girl getting the hang of her adorable new toy and still rocking the Pavlik Harness on her favorite toy mat!

…and this is probably my favorite photo of the month! Watching Titan be a big brother has definitely been one of my favorite things! He adores his little sister and seriously thinks the sun, moon and stars all revolve around her! 🙂

Museum Day Live! | Our Visit to the Railroaders Memorial Museum

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Last year in September, we took advantage of The Museum Day Live! day that is hosted by the Smithsonian magazine in which participating museums across the country open their doors for FREE to anyone with a Museum Day Live! ticket.

I had thought that to take advantage of this event we would probably need to drive to Pittsburgh, but after doing a quick search, I found a museum participating fairly close to us (well, at least a lot closer than Pittsburgh) called the Railroaders Memorial Museum (America’s only interactive railroaders museum). Admission to this museum is normally $10 per adult and $8 per child, so on a normal day we would pay $28 for our little family. I debated going because I figured it would probably be really crowded since it was a free day, but I am definitely glad we still went because there were no crowds at all and free is definitely better than almost $30!

For those of our who aren’t familiar with Pennsylvania and it’s history, the railroad industry at one time was HUGE in various parts of Pennsylvania. One area in particular, Altoona, was key to the railroad industry. Over 6,000 steam locomotives were built in Altoona and the area is also home to the Horseshoe Curve “an engineering marvel”. The railroad industry is of course still present in the area, but it is not nearly what it was 150 years ago. So it was awesome to be able to go to the museum, watch the historical videos, do the interactive exhibits, read all the historical facts and learn more about this area that we’ve been living in for the past year! An area I hadn’t ever even heard of until a few months before we moved to Pennsylvania. 🙂

Inside the museum there were three floors of various exhibits that talked about everything from what working on the railroad was like and how the community grew in the area due to the railroad to how a train wreck once left tons of circus animal wandering the town.

Of course, one of my favorite parts was watching all of the short video presentations they had. We were able to watch one about the birth of the Horseshoe Curve and another about how the Era of Steam in Altoona began and grew to what is was at it’s peak. It was fascinating to me to learn how transportation changed in the state from horse drawn wagons, to boats in the canals and finally to the fastest method (at the time) the train!

The movies weren’t Titan’s favorite, but he humored us in them and actually ended up learning quite a bit from them.

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His favorite parts of the museum were all the interactive displays and seeing how people used to live. He especially liked checking out how different kinds of candy used to be packaged years ago. 😉

At this station you got to see what it takes to run a train yard and to move around the tracks so that each train gets to where it needs to go each time. Titan (after finishing it), “Ok, whoever has that job has to be really organized!” LOL Of course, then we talked about how today most of it is run by computers, but yes, 100-150 years ago, it would have taken a lot of organization and man power to keep things operating smoothly.

Another fact Titan found interesting was that when the Horseshoe Curve was built, the workers were only paid $0.25 per day! And they worked 12 hour days!

Once we finished with everything inside of the museum we moved outside to where they had a few train cars that you could walk through and look at up close.

Last but not least, a quick treat we grabbed on the way home from the outing. At the museum Titan kept asking for a treat in the Gift Shop because he was apparently “starving”. Like most gift shops though everything was way overpriced so we promised Titan we would grab some frozen custard at The Meadows. On this visit I tried the Turtle custard and it was REALLY good! Some of the best custard I’ve ever head.

And that was our afternoon. Overall, it was a really fun and interesting museum and we all learned a lot about trains, railroads, and the history of Pennsylvania.

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Don’t live in the area (or not planning a vacation to Pennsylvania anytime soon ;))? The Railroaders Museum has an awesome website where you can look at photos and do some quick virtual tours of the museum. I know it’s not as fun as doing something in person but if you’re kids are learning about trains at school or have an interest in trains, it’s a great resource filled with lots of facts and information in an easy to read and understand format! 🙂