Valentine's Day

I know it's been a while since I blogged. I thought I'd tell you about our Valentine's day. Those of you who know Art well will know he usually doesn't think much of this particular holiday. As far as he is concerned, it was invented by card companies to bring up their profits. Sometimes I get a card and sometimes I don't. So I didn't know what to expect this year. I decided to celebrate the holiday even if Art wasn't into it. I set the table with a red and pink theme, along with some heart shaped confetti. I topped it all off with a balloon I tied to the inside garage door knob, so he could see it when he came in to park the car.

He was plesantly surprised with all my efforts. I made him some of his favorite things for dinner and gave him a little polar bear wearing a sweater with a heart on it. I thought he might like it for his desk at work. That is in fact where it's home is now. Well, he had a surprise for me also. He not only gave me a card, he bought tickets to see the ballet version of Romeo and Juliet this past Sunday. I thought that was so romantic. That wouldn't have been one of the ways I would have described Art as of late. So, he threw me a curve. Needless to say we had a good time at the ballet, even though it did end in a tragedy. This Valentine's Day didn't.

A couple of new pics

I just thought I'd include a couple of new pictures of Casey. He was enjoying his afternoon snack when I decided to take a few pictures of him with the evidence on his mouth. He really enjoys having his picture taken. I had no trouble getting him to smile, he did it without any prompting. He seemed to like his garden vegetables. Pam

Holidays are over

Well, all is quiet after the holidays. We went to Rochester to visit my family for Thanksgiving this year. We were only there for three days, but it was worth the trip. We all met at Denise and Peter's home and had an enjoyable dinner, eating way too much of course. Our trip back and forth on the highway was uneventful, but a little long.

Katie, Casey and I went to the Cincinnati Zoo to see the lights just before Christmas. We actually did see some animals too, but in the dark we didn't see very many. It was a fun evening and one we will have to repeat in the years to come.

We went over to Katie's for Christmas morning. We had some great food for breakfast and opened presents. Then it was off to Cindy's for Christmas dinner and more presents. The food was great and so was the company. We are looking forward to many holidays spent with family and friends. We are especially looking forward to Matt's attendance at the next Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. Pam

Chistmas Greetings

I know I haven't posted in a while. I went out and got our Christmas tree on Friday before the snow storm. I brought it in the house and put it up in the stand by myself. I thought this was going to be a bigger feat than it was. It actually wasn't that heavy, and I figured it would be better to get it up without Art's help. He doesn't handle these things well sometimes. Well, here is a pic anyway. And a link to a special Christmas greeting. Pam http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1443699341

Visit to Pittsburgh for Steeler game

Well, I thought I'd finally blog about our trip to see the Steeler game back in October. The trip there was uneventful, however we spent a lot of time driving in the Pittsburgh area finding our way in and around the city. It had been many years since Art had to drive to the Stadium or find his way to area attractions, so we had a little trouble. Actually, I should start from the beginning. We arrived at the hotel where we met some friends from Philly, Bill and Barb. We worked with Barb at Access before we moved. They were meeting us there to go to the game together the next day. It was much hotter than expected for October, so shorts were in order for stay. This was a surprise for Bill for his birthday, thought he knew about the game about a week before, he didn't know there was anyone else involved in attending the game. So, needless to say he was a little surprised to see us in the lobby of the hotel, thought he said he kind of had a clue he was meeting someone there. But all went well, and we all had a good time. It was great meeting Bill and spending time with the two of them.

We went into the city to sight see a little. We rode the Duquesne Incline, the views on top of the mountain were great, we got some awsome pictures. We had dinner at Jerome Bettis' restaurant, "Bettis Grill 36". The food was great and of course the decor was Steeler all the way.

The game the next day was fun, though a little bit too hot. We did survive thankfully, the sun wasn't on us the whole time so it wasn't unbearable. The game was great to watch, and sharing it with fellow Steeler fans made it all the better.

We said our goodbyes on Sunday night since we were leaving separately the next day. It was had to know we weren't going to see them for a while, except we have already made plans to make this a yearly event. Hopefully I won't make it so long before the next blog. Pam

Visit from my sister!

This all happened very quickly. My sister, Denise visited us from Rochester, NY a couple of weeks ago. She stayed for a week so we were able to spend some real quality time together. For the first few days it was too hot and humid to do much of anything. So, we mostly shopped and hung out together, which we enjoyed a lot.

We did go to the Clifton Grist Mill on Tuesday for breakfast. A long drive just to eat breakfast, but it was a working grist mill. And they use their own flour and grains in the restaurant they have on the site. The pancakes were the biggest we've ever seen. The waitress warned us about them, but we didn't believe they could be that big. We were wrong. We could only eat about 1/4 of them. We brought the rest home for later consumption. We also took a walk in Clifton Gorge Park, just down the road. Very pretty and good exercise after those mammoth pancakes.

We did get a chance to get to the zoo, something Denise wanted to see. We also went into Kentucky, by way of the Anderson Ferry. I didn't know about this mode of travel until Katie went to Kentucky a couple of weeks before to pick up a changing table for us. It sounded like an interesting way to get there, so we went on Saturday morning at about 7:45am to get the ferry. There was a lot of fog on the river so we couldn't see the water or the Kentucky side until we were about half way across. The fog was lifting off the water in a very eerie but interesting way.

We went to Big Bone Lick State Park in Northern Kentucky, right after we went to Covington to check out a church with very beautiful architecture. We arrived at Big Bone Lick with very few traveling problems, not so in the return trip. More later on that. We were surprised to find out they had a Bison herd in the park, a pleasant surprise. We took a bunch of pictures and then headed into the park more to check out the Lewis and Clark reenactment they had scheduled that day. Another pleasant surprise. Apparently Lewis and Clark were sent to Big Bone Lick by Thomas Jefferson to bring back dinosaur bones. Clark's great, great, great, great grandson was supposed to be there as one of the reenactors. But we waited for more than an hour and it still hadn't started. So we gave up and just took a picture of one of the other reenactors, I think he was supposed to be Lewis.

We had directions back from the park we had printed out from Mapquest. But between errors on the directions, and poor sign posting, we got lost a couple of times. What should have taken us an hour, ended up taking at least two. We finally got back around 2:30-3:00pm. We were going to Meet Art to go over to Newport for dinner, but when I talked to him on the phone he informed me he had just been offered a job. Apparently, he went to a hiring fair. I had no idea he was attending one. They hired him on the spot, so that was a prayer answered.

We did finally make it to Newport. We went to the Irish Pub and celebrated his new job. The food, as always, was delicious. That was a long day though, and we were all exhausted. Denise drove back to Rochester the next day, a long, long trip with more than one traffic problem. But she is home safe and sound. Pam

Toby Keith concert

Well, Art loved the Toby Keith concert Thursday evening. He sang all his best songs and was on almost 2 hours straight. I wouldn't however recommend the place we went for dinner. We went to Newport on the Levee and ate at Johnny Rockets. We thought the food you got for the price was skimpy. My sandwich didn't come with french fries or chips, not even a pickle. Now this is a diner, and you would expect there to be ketchup and mustard on the table. But there was only ketchup, and he also brought a squeeze bottle of ketchup so he could draw a smiley face on the serving plate. I wanted mustard, so Art went up to our waiter and asked for some mustard. The guy said, sure and proceeded to spoon about a 1/2 cup of mustard into a little serving dish. When we went to pay, we discovered they had charged 50 cents for the mustard. I couldn't believe it, and they even called it a "side of mustard" on the bill. Have you ever heard of a side of mustard. Who orders a side of mustard? It's not as if I was going to take out a spoon and start eating mustard. No, we will never go to Johnny Rockets again.
Pam