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.

Basement Adjustments

Well, I had a complaint about cold feet in the basement (I'm not going to rat him out) so I decided to make an adjustment to hopefully take care of the issue.  I did take a temperature reading and the basement is running 1-2 degrees colder than the main floor of the house at floor level.  I'm not sure I will be able to completely correct the differential but I decided I would give it a try. 

I ended up running a new branch of duct for the heating and cooling system on one end of the basement and it went so well that I may run another on the opposite side of the basement tonight.  The unfinished side of the wall is ugly but the living side looks like the register has been there all the time.  Who really cares what the side looks like that no one really sees anyway?  The whole job took less than an hour and the one I'm going to run tonight will take even less time.  Here are a few pictures; most of you will be bored but if you are....don't look!

Helper Katie putting her two cents worth in.

Register boot on the unfinished side of the wall

Cut for the trunk line boot

Rather ugly duct tape job on the main truck boot but I couldn't find my Aluminum duct tape (only temporary)

Duct running and connected to the boots

All Finished!

Big Day for Katie

Our almost 4 year old going on 17 had a big day on Saturday.  She looked at Lisa and me and said "Let's go get my ears pierced".  Now those word also came out of her mouth a couple of weeks ago as well only to tell us "not today".  Since we were looking for something to do anyway, we headed out to the mall and no backing out this time.  Katelyn was so rock solid, no tears were shed (not even a sign of a watery eye).  Lisa, well that was another story.

Picture a crowd of about 12 or so gathering around to watch this tiny 3, almost 4, year old getting her ears pierced.  I'm sure it's some kind of sickness that all these people wanted to see a little girl cry her head off but nothing.  Then all of a sudden we hear someone in the crowd say she's not crying but look at her momma!  Yep, Lisa was wiping a tear away when I turned to look at her.

Waiting patiently

Marking her ears

The big moment

No tears!