Signs of spring are finally here! This winter seemed to be unusually rough on me this year. I don't know if it was all the snow or the fact that Katelyn is at that age that it's difficult to take her anywhere for more than a half hour at at time. But the days are longer and I've recently seen some extremely confused robins in the yard is reason to get excited that warmer days are in the not too distant future.

Shawn's birthday is on Sunday so he gets to celebrate it today at school. Elementary is much more advanced in their media capabilities these days; instead of morning announcements, Shawn's school has morning visual announcements on closed circuit television. So Mom and Dad got to sit in the school library and watch Shawn on television say "hi my name is Shawn and I want to say hi to all my friends, my Mom in the library and my two wonderful teachers......" Seems that he forgot that I was there and he is an enormous brown nose to call his teachers wonderful. It is a cool birthday ritual nonetheless.

We are getting ready for our spring break vacation to Florida. Shawn's school is off for Eater break and then intersession on back to back weeks so we are taking advantage of the two weeks off and going to sunny and hopefully warmer Florida. Lisa's parents wanted to do something this year with their family so they rented a 3 bedroom condo on the beach and have paid for the transportation and condo. I am thankful for the generosity because I'm not sure we would be going to Florida this year otherwise. It should be fun. May take in a spring training baseball game and do a little fishing and of course some beer drinking!

When we get back, I will be on my annual trek to Indian's fan mecca...opening day! Probably will be incoherent by noon and freezing my tail off by 3:05. Hopefully this year we don't have the horrific snow storm that we had last year. This year we have a few extra guys coming to partake in the festivities so this will be a fun year.

Tonight we will probably hit the grocery store for some last minute items for Shawn's birthday party and do what we always seem to do; clean the house. Looks like another busy weekend! She is a handful!"Come to the Dark Side"

Thank God it's Friday! This week has dragged for what seems like forever. I guess it doesn't help that I can't seem to shake the damn cold that I've had for the past week and a half either. Shawn decided that he wants a birthday party with family and doesn't want a party with his classmates and friends. It took us by surprise; I thought for sure he was going to pick a bowling party or a party at Q-zar laser tag. We were so sure that he wanted one of those highly expensive parties that all the kids seem to have that we told the family that we weren't having one for Shawn when we had Katelyn's party.....I guess we are just dumb parents....what do we know anyway!

Looks like we are going to have a simple pizza and cake party with a theme of airplanes that has now changed to Star Wars. Seems that Shawn is now a huge fan of Star Wars and more specifically Darth Vader. He's scared the fecal matter right out of me twice now with his Darth Vader mask, black cape (graduation gown) and his light saber. You never know where Vader may lurk, he stood outside in the garage and waited for me to come in from digging out the ice formed at the end of the driveway and scared the living hell out of me!

This weekend really doesn't promise to be anything special at all. I may finish up the organization process in the basement by building a couple more shelving units and getting the basement mopped up but that really sounds too much like work. I guess they are talking about another good dumping of snow coming our way today and tonight so maybe I can use the new snow blower one more time this season. Have a good weekend!

Sorry about my lack of posts as of late but blogging has been far from the forefront of my mind lately. I do want to say thank you to all that have sent cards and kind words this past week over the death of Dauber. It's really hard to believe that a dog can have so much of an impact on our lives. The simple things that we were constantly complaining about are now the things that we miss most. The 5am wake up every morning for feeding or the crazy all out sprint down the stairs on the way to the 5am feeding. Dauber was always under foot in the kitchen and it's really strange not stepping on him when in the kitchen preparing dinner. And what really got me the most was this weekend when Shawn was at his friend's and Katelyn with Lisa's parents. The very unfamiliar sound of silence....I really don't like it! I even miss the dog hair floating around the ceramic tiles. Lisa and I have never been in a house together for more than 6 months without Dauber around...it's really strange and pretty lonely.

Dauber did arrive home on Thursday and we ordered a really nice and non-obtrusive urn that doubles as a nice mantel clock. It's all still so very surreal.

Anyway, this post while not all that exciting to most, is a cheap therapy session for me. Sorry if I boring any of you with it.

On to other things.....

The family along with Lisa's Mom and Dad went to the annual Family Fun Fest at Shawn's school. The 2-1/2 hour event consists of a lot of bingo, about 25 raffles and a whole lot of screaming kids. We didn't win any of the bingo games or the raffles but Shawn seemed to enjoy himself. On Saturday, we spent about 4 hours cleaning the house. I gave the kitchen and laundry room the heavy cleaning it so desperately needed. Next weekend, I will tackle all the ceramic floors. Saturday night, Bev and Ted took Katelyn and Lisa, Shawn and I went to dinner with Jill, Todd and the kids to Abeulo's for Mexican food and then over their house to play some cards. We left Shawn there for his very first sleep over!

On Sunday, we sent grocery shopping and had Bev and Ted over for burgers on the grill since the weather was so nice. It will be the last of the burgers for me for awhile. I have put back on about 10 pounds of the 40 that I lost over the past 12 months and my clothes are starting to get a bit tight. Time for some cabbage soup and some serious calorie counting for me!

To think...$25 can buy this much happiness and unconditional love!

THE BEST FRIEND A FAMILY COULD EVER HAVE.
Dauber (1997-2008)

We're so lucky to have had you in our lives. Our hearts ache and we miss you terribly. Rest comfortably old friend. We Love You!

Not much happening the past couple of days except for all this snow that fell. It was a strange snow fall because most of it came from the northeast. When the winter weather comes from the northeast, we typically get twice as much snow and the way our house is situated, it doesn't seem to accumulate on our driveway as badly as it does went the weather comes from the northwest. So other than trying to keep warm, this week has been relatively quiet so far.

Monday I ended up going to Cabela's and bought my cargo carrier. The bags a bit heavier than I would like but what did I expect from a waterproof duffel that sits on top of your car as it rolls down the highway at 80 mph? For my purposes, the bags will work fine and they seem to be pretty airline baggage handler safe or in other words; pretty indestructible.

Last night, I decided to dabble in my latest hobby. If you haven't guessed the hobby by now, it's experimenting with Indian cooking. Last night we stopped by Kroger and picked up a few ingredients I was missing to make Rajma. Rajma is nothing more than kidney bean curry. The basic ingredients are dark kidney beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes and tons of spice. I would describe Rajma as almost a thick Indian chili with a kick. I served the Rajma over brown rice (not so Indian) to myself seeing that Lisa is a chick lipped lily livered scared e cat and refuses to try anything remotely Indian except for Naan and Roti. Speaking of Naan (bread), I may try my hand at baking my first batch tonight. For the record, I didn't like Rajma as much as I liked the Channa. The Rajma was good and I'll make it again but I like Channa a bit more.

And as most of you probably guessed, the Rajma goes perfectly with beer! My beer of choice lately is Hoegaarden, which is a Belgian white wheat beer. I really seem to like the Belgian beers of late. One of my favorites is Delirium Tremems which packs a punch at 9% alcohol by volume! You don't feel too much pain after throwing down a few beers with the pink elephant on the label.

As promised to Shawn, here is a picture of him with his latest Lego creation; a Raiders of the Lost Ark scene:

Another weekend that was just too short. Friday, Lisa took Katelyn for her one year appointment that went well as expected. If I remember correctly, she is 26 pounds and 31" long which puts her in the 95 percentile for her age. The only suggestion we got from the doctor was to begin weening her off all the milk in order to make her hungrier so she will start eating more food. Up to this point, we had taken Katelyn off formula and began giving her whole milk but she pretty much refuses all food except for stage two mac and cheese. Giving her table food is out of the question unless you enjoy getting upchucked on by a one year old. Friday night I went out with my friend Bo. We really didn't do anything real exciting but did catch up on the happenings in his life and more specifically his kids and his love life (not all that exciting). We basically just hung out at one of the local restaurant bars called the Brew House. I guess the brew house is now closed as of Sunday so I was one of the last to hang out there! We did attempt to hit one of the Mexican restaurants too for a Margarita but we ended up leaving as soon as we walked into the place because his ex-girlfriend was there.

Saturday, Lisa and I dropped the kids off at her parent's house and did a little shopping and got a bite to eat at Doc Watson's. We have been to Doc Watson's several times and the food as always been good but wow, this time it was terrible. We had chicken nacho's (again, we had these on two other occassions) and something tasted like a chemical or what I would think that nail polish remover would taste like. We sent the nachos back and the manager was pretty non-nonchalant about the whole thing. I decided to try a small white pita-pizza. Again, the food taste like chemical and I finally narrowed down the issue to the tomatoes. When I informed the waitress that the taste was coming from the tomaotes, I didn't even get a response. Lisa's salad (without tomatoes) was fine.

Later Saturday night, Lisa and I went out with Jill and Todd. We ended up trying a newer Japanese restaurant called Nagoya. Unfortunately, the restaurant wouldn't take reservations for the hibachi unless you had at least six in your party and the wait without a reservation to sit at the hibachi was 2 hours. We opted to sit at a regular table. I had a traditional tuna teriyaki dinner and Lisa had the chicken teriyaki. My tuna was a bit overdone but Lisa's was very good. We even had not one but two of their tasty fish bowl drinks that was loaded with Vodka, Rum some other libations and fruit juice. For the record, the second drink was Lisa's idea. We then stopped by Bar Louie's for a drink before heading to see The Bucket List.

The Bucket List was cute but I don't think that it lived up to the hype. I would suggest seeing it but wait till it comes to video or pay per view.

Sunday, it was off to shopping and eating again. I know it seems like all we do is go out to eat but have you been to Toledo lately? We ran a few errands looking for birthday gifts for Shawn, went to Lowe's and to the grocery store for a few items as well. We also tried a new place to us but not a new place for breakfast called Rumors. It was your typical greasy spoon with incredibly large portions. I ordered an omelet that was so large that I could only woof down about half. I think this place rivals Nick's in portion size. Bev and Ted came over for Chicken Chili and I made a batch of my soon to be famous Channa and Naan.

This week we're supposed to get hit with a pretty good snowstorm by Toledo standards and I need to go to Cabela's to by the roof top cargo carrier I've had my eye on for our vacation in March. Giant fish-bowl drink for two (sorry about the quality--phone camera)Giant Omelet (another poor photo)

Just a few video clips from Katelyn's birthday party last weekend. I will try to write more later.




And this is what happened to the cake a few days later: