Summer Vacation 2009

Well, its been almost a week since we returned from our 9 day expedition to sunny and extremely hot Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach tends to be one of our favorite vacation spots since it is so very family oriented and really pretty affordable. We have been to the area 4 times over the past 12 years or so. This year in an effort to save some cash, we (actually I) decided it would be in our best interest to drive the 12-1/2 hour drive...the entire famdamily! We left on Friday intending to drive about 8 hours and stay the night somewhere since the condo we were renting wouldn't be available until Saturday after 3PM. We drove until we reached the Charlotte, NC area and spent the night in a very nice Embassy Suites resort for a really reasonable $115 which included breakfast the next morning. I am partial to Hilton properties due to their rewards program and typically their properties are clean and comfortable and I really enjoy Embassy Suites because of the added space and the breakfast but this was definitely the nicest Embassy I have ever spent time at. Modern, resort with golf course and a couple of restaurants and cheap! We ended up eating a rather good pizza from the hotel bar for dinner at 10PM.

Saturday morning, we had our breakfast and headed over to an outlet mall that was in the area to kill some time before driving the last 3 hours. The 3 hours actually turned into 5 plus hours due to nasty traffic heading into Myrtle Beach. I am thankful that we took a different route on the way home. We did end up at the condo around 5PM. The condo was really nice. We were a bit worried about renting a condo sight unseen but it was exactly as it was described and as the pictures on the website showed. We were right on a tee box of a par three on a Greg Norman designed golf course and condo was nicely furnished and extremely comfortable. To think that we could rent a two bedroom condo with fully furnished kitchen, living room, dinning room and screened in porch at $800 for the week was amazing to me. I guess that a bad economy can have a few perks. Granted we weren't on the beach but for an average to below average hotel room on the beach would have cost us at least $200 more than the condo and would have been nasty and cramped.

The condo was actually in a large planned community that included several pools, condos, homes and 4 golf courses. The community was actually affected by the wild fires in the area that took place in March and several homes were destroyed and damaged.

Saturday after we unpacked and relaxed for a few minutes we ended up at a sports bar called The Overtime Sports Cafe (food as just average but we were starved) and then we walked around a nice outdoor shopping area/tourist trap called Barefoot Landings.

Sunday was our one and only day at the beach. The resort has a shuttle that picks up every hour from various point in the resort area but since we had a ton of toys to bring and the fact that we couldn't count on the kids wanting to leave at the right time to catch the shuttle, we decided to drive ourselves. The resort has an area at the beach with restrooms and a sun deck so we wanted to be sure to camp at the beach near the area but no where could we find a map to where the resort's property was anywhere. So, we found the shuttle and followed it there. Parking was an entire different story. We rented an umbrella and chairs and played in the ocean for about 3 hours in which Shawn got pretty beat up in the waves and of course my little daredevil loved the water and sand. Back to the condo for our daily nap-time and then to Thorney's for dinner. We have been to Thorney's the last three trips but this one will be the last. The place is a hell hole and the kid's meals were horribly over cooked. Lisa's steak was really the only thing that was decent.

Monday was spent at the resort's huge pool. I have never seen a pool so large in my entire life. This thing had to be nearly as big as a football field and is only 3 to 3-1/2 feet deep. It was great for the kids, but swimming in a 3 foot pool is a bit challenging for a fat boy. The kids and I were at the pool for about 4 hours that day while Lisa worked through her payroll issues. Yes, Lisa even does payroll when she's on vacation. That evening, we ended up a one of the many Calabash seafood establishment in the area. I love oysters and this is the place to garbage up on them. On the way back to the condo for the night, we stopped by another outdoor mall/tourist trap but this one is newer than Barefoot Landings called Broadway at the Beach.

Tuesday was time for a change. Shawn and I went golfing on a nice par 3 golf course but could only play 9 holes because Shawn was so hot. It was for the better anyway I think; Shawn wasn't scoring too well anyway and it was nearly 95 degrees in the shade. That afternoon, we ended up a one of the miniature golf courses and then to dinner at East of Chicago Pizza....simple and familiar.

Wednesday was back to the pool and then Shawn and Lisa headed to Alligator Adventures while I napped with Katelyn. Wednesday's dinner was at the Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery. The food was pretty good here and they had a nice IPA.

On Thursday Shawn said "no pool today" so we ended up driving toward Georgetown, SC and wandered around a few shops before heading to a nice little shopping area somewhere between Georgetown and Myrtle Beach called Hammock Village. Then back to the condo to rest and then to Barefoot Landings for dinner at a place called Bully's Pub. Bully's has an outdoor dinning area that overlooks the lake. The lake has a ton of carp and turtles which Katelyn decided to feed most of her meal to. After dinner, Lisa and I sampled about 10 wines at the vine shop at The Carolina Winery and ended up picking up a half case to take home with us. Shawn ended up wandering through a mirror maze, Katelyn and I took a merry-go-round ride and I won her a stuffed animal turtle by catapulting rubber frogs into a lily pad.

Friday was spent at the pool and to Planet Hollywood for dinner where Kate fell off her chair and whacked her head pretty good. It took about 10 minutes to get her to stop crying. Then Shawn spent an hour at MagiQuest. MagiQuest is a pretty neat concept and to watch all the kids and some of the adults running around like ticked off ants looking for their ant hill was entertaining.

Saturday, we were on the road by 7:45am. The traffic out of town was nice and steady but we were caught behind a traffic accident for an hour or more in the mountains in Virginia. We ended stopping in Columbus for a quick visit to Marc's and a quick bite to eat before heading for home. We finally arrived home at 11pm. The ride home was better than the ride down (Lisa behaved herself better on the return trip) and I got to spend father's day at home instead of on the road.

Father's day was nice. We ended up at the grocery store spending more than I can ever remember on groceries and then I grilled some steaks marinated in a soy-ginger mixture which turned out really nice. I also got a "world's greatest golfer" trophy from Shawn and 2010 Tiger Woods Golf game for the Wii.

Monday it was a return to work and in the evening it was time to get rid of some of the dill that I grew this year. The dill is out of control and it grows like crazy. I ended up making 8 pounds of pickles and a wine bottle full of dill vinegar. I will let you know how they turn out in a couple of months.

Tonight is our annual night at the disco party. This year should be fun since it's supposed to be in the upper 80s. Looks like beer will be flowing to cool off....if I really needed an excuse.

Here are the pictures from vacation

Here are some father's day pictures

Summer craziness

Well since I last posted it seems like a ton of things have happened. I went on my trade show trip to Seattle a week and a half ago and it was a busy crazy time. I ended up going myself since the other person that was scheduled to attend with me had a family issue to contend with. It seemed like constant motion for me from catching the airport shuttle to my hotel to setting up the booth to exhibiting to tearing down the booth to flying home made for a hectic trip. I did manage to stroll though downtown during my downtime and the city is really nice. The only thing that was a big turn off is all the bums around town panhandling. These weren't your typical big city bums either, they were pretty well dressed, bathed and it looks as if they were fed pretty well too. I've been in Manhattan and Chicago and I have never experienced so many people begging for a handout in my life.

I did get to experience The Pike Market and a couple of "Tim-style" restaurants during my visit and I walked more than I have since I went on Lisa's infamous walking vacation in Boston many moons ago. My very favorite restaurant in Seattle was at The Taphouse Grill. If you click on the link, you will understand why it was my favorite...I ended up there twice. Not only did they have 160 beers on tap (I even toured the keg cooler) but the food was pretty good as well. On Sunday, it was happy hour all day long and I took advantage by having my fair share of Sushi Rolls at $2.95 each! When I returned the next night, I had the very best Mac-N-Cheese ever and I hate Mac-N-Cheese. This Mac had about 5 cheeses as well as Dungeness Crab in it...Wow! A definite party in my mouth. I also had dinner at a bar that boasted nearly 800 different alcohols as well as a $3.95 Martini. The neat thing about this place was there was a 6 foot diameter spinning wheel that would be set in motion every half hour and that would be the drink special until the wheel was set in motion again. This place had pretty good BBQ too, nice and smokey. I also had a beer at Pike's Brewery and lunch at Ivar's Fish Bar. Both were pretty tasty. As for the trade show itself, the traffic could have been better but not horrible. My Uncle Ron lives in a Seattle suburb but there wasn't really a whole lot of time to visit so I didn't even bother calling him to try to fit dinner or a visit into both of our schedules.

As I returned home, I got recruited into helping set up The Lisa-Jill-Jill's mom and Bev garage sale being held at our house. When I say as I returned home I mean immediately as I returned home. I jumped out of my car and went straight to work. On Thursday, the sale began and it started with a bang. Some lady stopped at 8am and dropped nearly $400 on kids stuff right away including our crib and changing table. Thursday and Friday the sale was held at our house and on Friday evening, we hauled everything over to Jill's place to resume the sale at her house. Saturday was the neighborhood sale in Jill's housing development. All in all, the sale netted $1900 in three days and $650 of it was ours which will make our Myrtle Beach trip a little nicer.

Shawn's last day of school is tomorrow and it coincides with Lisa's 39th birthday. Shawn has been in such a good mood the past few days because he can see the light at the end of the tunnel and soon he will get to go on vacation to his favorite vacation spot in the whole world. Speaking of vacation, how do you keep a 2 year old quiet on a 12-13 hour car ride? I bet I won't find out...I'm not looking forward to the drive at all. We did however find a sweet deal on a condo for the week. Its not on the ocean but does happen to be on a golf course and we got it for $800 for the week. Not bad for a two bedroom, two bath condo during high time.

I had another unfortunately experience with Ebay. This time I purchased a wort chiller which is basically a radiator that is immersed in wort (liquid that becomes beer before the yeast is added) that aids in the process of cooling the wort from boiling to 70 degrees F. you need to cool the wort as quickly as possible to help in the prevention of nasties getting into your wort while it gets to temperatures that won't damage the yeast. Well, I won an auction on a new chiller and low and behold it never arrived and my email to the seller wasn't returned. I ended up making a claim on paypal and at least I was refunded the full purchase price. I think I will end up making my own wort chiller soon.

When we get back from vacation, we will be attending the annual disco party at the newly remodeled Centennial Quarry. The renovation is almost complete and the place looks really nice. I can't wait to see the inside of the joint. Disco isn't my favorite music but the beer is cold and the people watching is the best anywhere.

For our wedding anniversary, Lisa got me a gift certificate from a place called Beer on the Wall. I think I'm going to use it for a couple of months of their beer of the month club.

So know that the garage sale crap is mostly gone, I have really no excuse for not starting on the big basement project. Oh yea I do, the stuff that is still down there is all over the place so now I have to get organized. Procrastination at its best!

Odds and Ends

I haven't updated all that often as of late. I'm not sure if it's because I don't find things "blog worthy", if I've just been too busy or just plain lazy. A couple of weeks ago Lisa and I worked at the parish festival for a couple of hours at the beer tent. This year was a bit more interesting since we worked the 8 pm to 10pm shift instead of the typical earlier shift. This year the organizers also through a curve at us by not only offering the usual Bud and Bud Light but also offered, Honker's Ale, Shock Top, Raz, O'doules, Corona and Corona light. The variety of beers along with the variance in prices as well as the increased traffic made for a very interesting shift pouring beers. Lisa also worked one of the kids game booths. We made an appearance all three days either to work or to be directed to spend money by an 8 year old that has not concept of what money is.

Shawn finished up his golf lessons last weekend with a session on the course. There were 10 kids in his class and it took the entire class about 2 hours to play 3 holes on an executive course. They played a par 3 that was 85 yards (Shawn had a 5), a par three about 220 yards (Shawn had an 8) and another par 4 that was about 260 yards (Shawn had a 12). He only lost 2 of his new high-tech Sponge Bob Squarepants long distance golf balls in the creek. All in all, Shawn showed a vast improvement from 5 weeks ago. On the first hole, he hit a 3 wood on the green but then 4 putted. It was a blast! I think he really enjoyed it and it looks like he would like to take more lessons this summer.

Lisa is getting ready for her annual garage sale (Tim is dancing the jig--finally parting with unused junk). I am getting ready for my trade show trip coming up soon and Shawn is so looking forward to summer break.

Over this past weekend we didn't have a lot planned so we loaded up the car, picked up Bev and Ted and headed to a festival in Port Clinton we saw advertised in "Great Lakes Living". What a bust that was. Just your typical over priced rides and food that attracted all types of characters. We were there for about 45 minutes, stopped for dinner and headed home. Actually it wasn't that bad, it did get us out of the house for the afternoon.

Yesterday was Lisa and my 14th year wedding anniversary if you didn't know it already. The day started out pretty nice, nothing really earth shattering at all but both the kids were behaving in the morning which is rare and we had a really nice lunch at Rosie's which was a nice local multi-location pizza joint that is now a single location Italian cafe with really nice a really nice atmosphere. I had a nice grouper Ruben sandwich which sounds horrible but it from the very first bite it felt like I had a favor party in my mouth....deeeeelicious!

Unfortunately our evening wasn't so nice. Shawn decided to spring the fact he has two tests coming up. His social studies test is today and his religion test in tomorrow. Typically the teacher sends study aids and pretty much tells us exactly what material to study. This time Shawn is clueless. After a trip back to his classroom to check for the ever popular missing note and coming up empty Lisa managed to find out what was going to be covered on both tests by calling a classmate's parent. Needless to say, the evening consisted of me doing some laundry and taking a long walk with Katelyn and Lisa quizzing Shawn.

We enrolled Shawn in a Lego engineering class at our local community college. Shawn seems to be enjoying the class in which he is learning how to animate different Lego structures and vehicles he builds. Tonight is his third of six classes. I hope he figures out a way to build a robot that cleans up his toys at the end of the day.

I leave you with a smattering of random pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Shawn's Very first time golfing an entire hole on a course

The Tee Shot on the 85 yard par 3

The result of the tee shot--left for a 40 foot putt for par

Shawn lining up his birdie putt (ended up taking 4 putts)


Parish Festival

Not too thrilled with Dumbo!

The merry-go-round if more our speed

Shawn at Lego Class

Check out the "cool" shades

Church Spared!

If anyone it interested, it seems the Cleveland Catholic Diocese actually gave my childhood church a reprieve from closing it's doors. Here's the story.

Piano Recital

I decided to make a rare weekend post to brag about Shawn and how well he did at his piano recital. Shawn was pretty nervous going into the recital and to tell you the truth, so was I. Shawn really seems to like playing the piano and taking lessons but its like pulling teeth to get him to practice. Actually practice of any kind is difficult to get him to do from golf practice and baseball to math facts and piano. I really had visions of Shawn stumbling on his songs and getting upset and crying during his 3 song recital.

The recital was at an old historical house in on one of the metro-parks and there were 7 other kids involved from first year students to kids that are in high school that have taken lessons for some time. I think Shawn was one of three kids that were first year students and I think he did great. The biggest surprise of the day was as Lisa, Katelyn, Bev and Ted were all settling in for the recital to begin in walked Shawn's school teacher. Lisa asked Mrs. Walters, very surprised, who are you here to see to which she responded "well Shawn, he invited me". I can't even begin to explain how the fact that Shawn asked and then Mrs. Walters actually showed up made Lisa and I feel. Shawn didn't even let on that he invited his teacher. How many teachers these days would actually take time out of their Saturday to show up for one of her 2nd grade student's piano recital!

Well, enough bragging, here are clips of his three songs. Remember he has only taken about 28 lessons and he could do nothing but bang on the keys before his first lesson.

Star Wars Theme


Indian Dance

Willie and Tillie

Are you suprised!

50 day suspension for Manny Ramirez! Are you really surprised he would take a banned substance? Looks like his days of batting over .300 and hitting 100+ RBI and 40+ HR is pretty much over. Just Manny being Manny I guess.........

First Communion Sunday

Last Sunday was Shawn's First Communion. When I was a kid, I made my first communion by myself since I was late making it. Instead of second grade, I made mine in third due to the exorcism they performed on me during the entire year I was in second grade. I'm not sure the exorcism worked on me but I was able to make my communion. Shawn's first communion was made with his entire class which was pretty cool. Shawn even told me that he could get used to going to church; my grandmother would be so proud!

Not much other than that to report. After church we had family and friends over for lunch/dinner and had a good visit.

My spring yard work began last night with 6 yards of black gold being dumped on my driveway and my spending a modest $65 on annuals and a few perennials at Lowe's. I have to pick up a flat or two of Impatiens from The Andersen's tonight and I think I will be done with the plant purchases. I didn't get too far last night; only planted what I had and spread about 6 wheelbarrows full of mulch in one area in the back last night. If the weather holds out today (looks like rain right now), I will get the rest of the backyard landscaping complete tonight.

On another note, we are finally in the process of refinancing our house. With the home values dropping so badly, we owe more than what the house is worth so without the stimulus package we were unable to take advantage of the 1-1/4% interest rate drop until now! Dealing with mortgage people is so much fun...not!!

Here's a link to a few pictures of the first communion......