Strange week

Well this week have been a bit more hectic than usual.  Lisa and I are very spoiled to have her parents live so close to us and that they want to spend time with their grandchildren.  Not that my mom wouldn't like to spend more time with our little "angels" (I may have just threw up in my mouth a bit and my nose just grew a few inches) but the logistics of my mom living nearly two hours away doesn't allow for it.  Well back to the story.  Lisa's parents went on a "blue hair" casino trip this week with friends so they were obvious out of town.  Just so happens that we had President's day on Monday so Lisa took the day off from work which isn't a big issue since she could always use a day off.  Monday also saw a nice ice storm hit us so school was canceled on Tuesday as well.  Since Lisa took the day off on Monday, she put submitting payroll off until Tuesday.  So on Tuesday, I took the morning off and Lisa did payroll.  We then did the mid day switch and I went to work in the afternoon.  Today, Shawn has piano lessons after school so I will leave work early to take him to lessons.  I guess what I'm saying is:  "Bev and Ted, get your rear-ends home!"  We depend on you entirely too much, please don't get sick of the kids and thank you for all you do to help us be able to both work full time. 

The rest of the week looks to be busy as well.  Tonight, I pick up Bev and Ted us from their travels on the Blue Hair Express; hopefully with more money than they took with them.  Tuesday looks to be a normal day and then Lisa and I will be off on Friday getting prepared for the kids joint family birthday party that we are having on Saturday.  It's always good to have these family parties because the house gets a good cleaning and there are plenty of people around to help me drink my home brew.

This should be the last birthday party until next year.  Instead of a kid party for Shawn we are taking him on a quick trip to Chicago during his intersession week off in March.  We found a condo for rent on the 52 floor of a building in Downtown Chicago.  I'm looking forward to the views of Chicago from such a high vantage point....I think.  We'll end up seeing a few sites like maybe the aquarium and of course a trip to the Lego store and American Girl to accumulate more plastic junk for the kids. 

That's the update for now.  Have a good rest of the week!

Katie's Pictures

Just a quick post.  I just added a few of Katelyn's pictures to an album you can access by clicking the link to the left.  I'm not sure how often I will add pictures or for how much longer she will want to swipe the camera but I will try to update until someone tells me to stop.  I think it's interesting what she decides to take. 

Twitter

Not sure how long I will be into this but I started to play around with Twitter.  I typically don't like social media other than blogging for a number of reasons such as crazy friends from 2nd grade finding you and wanting to party saying we are best friends (totally has happened).  Or having lunatic fatal attraction ex-girlfriends posting something out of whack for all to see.  I figure if I wanted to communicate with these long lost crazy people, I wouldn't have lost touch with them in the first place.

I guess I wouldn't be so anti-social mass media if it weren't for the stalker I mentioned above.  I mean this guy that I knew for two years when I was a kindergartner and in first grade (a very long time ago), attempts to call me every year or two.  He named his first boy after me and I have absolutely nothing in common with the guy as of the last time I actually took his call which was probably 15 years ago.  I mean that kind of lune leaves messages referring himself as my best friend when I haven't spent any time with him for nearly 40 years? 

Anyway, no Facebook for me but I think I'm going to give Twitter a try for awhile.  If you want to follow me, let me know and if you can find me yourself on Twitter, I will tell you what my name is.

On another topic, we woke up to about 1/4 inch of ice on the ground this morning.  It's a good thing the kids were off for President's day anyway or they would be making up yet another day at the end of the year or during spring break week.  I hope the weather man is wrong for today.  We are supposed to get another round of freezing rain and then another 3-5 inches of snow.  I am ready for spring already!

Brew day as seen by the eyes of a 4 year old

Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless

What Language is this?

Katie has begun talking a some sort of foreign language and if I talk back she can go on for hours:

And back by popular demand....more photographs from a four year old's perspective:

Katie's new hobby

I just wanted to make a quick post that Katie has decided she loves to take Lisa's camera and take random pictures for fun.  Here are the best of the results:

This one out the family room is pretty good

First self picture.  

Foot Fetish?

Friday night

Friday after work, Lisa and I met up with a co-worker  and her husband for dinner at Rosie's.  Rosie's used to have multiple locations throughout the area and was primarily a pizza joint that offered pasta and sandwiches.  The pizza was probably my favorite in Toledo (nothing compares to Myles in Bowling Green or Antonio's in Parma)but it was a good Mom and Pop type pizza.  Rosie's closed all of it's traditional restaurants and opened a more upscale Italian place.  We've been to the new Rosie's for lunch a few times and the sandwiches were pretty good but the dinner was above average for Italian fare you can get in this area.  Lisa had a Filet Mignon which may be the  best I've every tasted and that includes several well known steak joints in places like Dallas and Chicago.  I had the seafood  special of the day which was cioppino.  I love cioppino and this one was as good as any I've had in the past.  It was full of flavor and had several clams, mussels, shrimp and a nice fish.  I would have like to see a crab claw or two and maybe a scallop for the price I paid but overall, very nice.  Lisa had a chocolate covered strawberry martini, which was nice but I really like the two pickle martinis I ordered.  The pickle martini was nothing more than a nice vodka dirtied up with some pickle juice and garnished with a baby dill.  Overall, the food was great, the service slow and the price high.  Not an every week place I would visit but one in a while for a nice dinner....probably.

Service was so slow, it took 1-1/2 hours from order to check, we almost missed the opening of Jerry Seinfeld.  Jerry was a blast.  He performed for about 1-1/2 hour and was pretty much as I expected.  All of his stand up could be additional episode of his sitcom if he every decided to do the show again.  At the end, he took questions from the audience (all of them sitcom related).  He did the low talk (helllooooooooo) and acted out how he said hello to Neumann.  All in all, I'm glad Lisa got me tickets for my birthday.  If you like his sitcom, you would like his stand up.  We have tickets to Ron White the day before my annual trip to Indian's opening day this year.  I'm really looking forward to seeing him.  

As I type, I am waiting for the carpet cleaning guy to finish up.  We had an appointment for carpet cleaning in the great room and upholstery cleaning for the couch, love seat and chair.  Once the planned cleaning was done, I asked the tech to clean a sample of our grout.  About half of our first floor is ceramic tile grout was getting a bit grungy.  So grungy that I forgot what the color of the grout was supposed to be.  Once the sample was done, there was no way I could live with the nasty grout anymore.  So, I added a two hour job to my bill  to clean the grout.  Unbelievable  the difference!  Highly recommended is you have a lot of grout in your house.  I'm almost embarrassed but I'm going to post a picture of the sample area that was cleaned.  What would you have done?

Our Little Girl is 4 Years Old Now!

This past weekend was all about Katie and the Superbowl of course.  Friday after work, we dropped Shawn, Katelyn and beast Cody to Lisa's Mom and Dad's house so Lisa and I could give the house a good cleaning.  I absolutely love and hate party cleaning time.  I love it because our house gets a good cleaning:  floors mopped, de-clutterization (Webster's needs to add that to the dictionary), cobwebs out of the chandeliers and the kitchen gets a through scrubbing and polishing.  I hate it because....well because it's work.

Saturday was the big day!  Unfortunately, as was the day Katie was born, the weatherman was not kind.  One to three inches of snow was the forecast but we got more like 6 inches and all of it fell two hours before until just after the party.  I ended up shoveling and snow blowing three times in 3 hours to keep the little girls and their moms from slipping on the drive and the sidewalks.  The lucky thing about that is that I didn't have to hang with all the girls and moms.  I ended up spending the 30 minutes that I was inside in the man-cave tipping a beer.  From what I did see, the girls all had a great time and they were all so very cute.  Katie is definitely one of the ring leaders at daycare.  The most amazing thing was that all 6 girls that were invited ended up making the very snowy trip to the party.  Saturday night Katie picked her favorite place to eat: BW3.

The party's theme was princess.  All the girls dressed in their best princess gowns and Lisa had crafts for them that were princess themed as well.  Here's a few pictures (sorry, there's more than a few):

Sign out by the Road

Look at all the Snow

"Rental" Princess Dresses and Shoes

Katie as a blond princess

The Princess waiting for her subjects to arrive

All the princesses

Cake Time

Decorate a crown craft

Katie and Avery

They sat so nicely during present opening time

Katie waving goodbye

The aftermath!

Skylar's handiwork on Katie's raccoon eyes

Dad as an overweight blond 80's rocker (not a good look at all)

Sunday was anyone but the Steelers day and to my absolute joy, the Cheese-Heads actually pulled one out!  Nothing better than a Steeler's team being beat on any given Sunday.  

This coming weekend will begin with Lisa and I going to see Jerry Seinfeld.  I used to love the sitcom; I'm sure I will enjoy his stand up.  Lisa got me tickets as well as tickets to Ron White for my birthday.  Saturday we are getting our family room carpet as well as the upholstery on all the furniture in the room cleaned.  Both are way over-due and I hope that the upholstery cleaning buys me 6 more months or so before I have to buy replacement furniture.  

Remember this Guy?

I sure miss Maggila...he was the bomb!  They don' t make em like this anymore.