Utah

The kids and I have made it to Utah! We're out here visiting family for a month and are really excited to see everyone. The plane ride was pretty uneventful, even considering the fact that I had a 2 and 3 year old flying with me. (thank goodness for direct flights from Cincinnati to Salt Lake!) Our flight was changed last minute to fly out an hour earlier - making take off time at 6 am! The biggest trooper was Anna. I woke her up a 3:30 in the morning and she didn't go to sleep until 8:30 at night Utah time (which is 10:30 Ohio time) with no naps or anything! She was just so excited to see everyone and especially her cousin Olivia that she kept fighting the sleep. I did however forget to bring my camera. So as soon as I learn how to use my moms I'll update the blog with some photos of our trip.

Q&A About me...

1. What are you most afraid of? Alligators/Crocodiles
2. What is the most recent movie that you have *seen in a Theater*? Alvin and the Chipmunks (Anna and I had a girls day together where we went out to lunch and a movie of her choice - that was her chocie)
3. Place of birth? Akron, Ohio
4. Favorite food? Cheese Enchiladas
5. What's your natural hair color? Brown
6. Ever been to Alaska? No
7. Ever been toilet papering? Yes
8. Love someone so much it made you cry? Ughhhh...yes
9. Been in a car accident? Yes
10. Croutons or bacon bits? Croutons
11. Favorite day of the week? Friday becuase it's the start of the weekend and it's date night in our house!
12. Favorite restaurant? Jeff Ruby's in Cincinnati or Gene and Georgetti's in Chicago
13. Favorite Flower? Hydrangea, Parrot Tulips, just never a carnation!
14. Favorite sport to watch? none, but if forced football
15. Favorite drink? Diet Coke
16. Favorite ice cream? Chocolate with peanut butter
17. Disney or Warner Brothers? Disney
18. Ever been on a ship? Yes
19. What color is your bedroom carpet? Light brown
20. How many times did you fail your driver's test? three
21. What do you do when you are bored? Catch up on odds and ends, surf the internet, call someone, read, watch tv.
22. Bedtime? lateley around 11
23. Favorite TV shows? real housewives of orange county, celebrity apprentice, the office, frasier re-runs, house hunters international and the travel channels Samantha Brown (that sounds like a lot of shows, but I just DVR everything and watch them when I have time)
24. Last person you went to dinner with? Justin - we tried this new Thai place called Teak. The food was so spicy that my lips were burning and we had to go out for milkshakes afterwards.
25. What happened at 30? Not there yet, but I'll guess cry!
26. What are your favorite colors? I really do like them all. "There is no such thing as a bad color, just bad color combinations!"
27. How many tattoos do you have? None
28. How many pets do you have? One. A pug named Chauncy
29. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Chicken
30. What do you want to do before you die? I will say that I just want to live a happy and full life
31. Have you ever been to Hawaii? No
32. Have you been to countries outside U.S.A.? Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Aruba
33.People you send this to..everyone on my list of family and friends!!!!

Hibachi

Last night we went to a Japanesse Steakhouse with our friend's the Babbs. It was John's 34th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than with a little Hibachi?!



We had just enough of us (eight to be exact) to fill the whole table by ourselves. The white dots you see is all the smoke from when the chef lit the whole Hibachi grill on fire - the kids LOVED it!!!

Here they made John stand on top of his chair and dance to their, I'm sorry to say, very poorly sung Happy Birthday song. As you can see they even had hand drums and everyone in the restraunt was clapping. At least John's smiling!!!

Here's Anna with her "training" chopsticks. She did really well with them and was even able to pick up her sticky rice in them!

And Cameron of course sporting a little bit of a spike in his hair. Cameron loved the restaurant and his favorite part was when they tried throwing food in his mouth!

The Culprit....

For Christmas, Justin received a new Ipod. However, I am sad to say that the Ipod only lived a short month. The culprit? Well that would be the washing machine. In Justin's attempt to be domestic, he forgot to take the Ipod, along with the Nike sport-kit attachments, out of his work-out pants BEFORE washing them! The good news? We can get ten percent off of a new Ipod! Is that really good news?

Wicked

Well, I got a HUGE surprise last night! Yesterday morning when I woke up there was a note taped to the mirror in my bathroom from Justin saying he was taking me out to dinner to celebrate our recent sign-on bonus. The note had a few instructions regarding what to wear and when to be ready. So obviously I was excited! He had the babysitter all lined up and everthing. So at the designated time, 5:30, I was all ready to go. We went downtown to a really nice steakhouse called Jeff Ruby's and had a FANTASTIC dinner in a nice corner booth and everything. Then our dessert came out and on the plate were two tickets to see the broadway musical Wicked (which I might add had sold out all performances for the month long showing in Cincinnati OVER NIGHT!!!) and the tickets were for that night! He had miraculously gotten ahold of two tickets and the curtain was going up in half an hour! I was so shocked and excited - not only that he had arranged everything, but that he had managed to keep it all a secret for an entire week! The performance was AMAZING! Our seats were about ten rows back on the side and it was just great! Way to go Justin! Nothing tops this one!!!!

Go Bucks!!!

Do they look fierce? We (and by that I mean Justin) are ready for the big game on Monday night! Hopefully this year Ohio State can pull it out and not embarss themselves two years in a row. And if you're wondering what they're wearing around their necks, well that would be an offical buckeye necklace.....yes, that is what a buckeye nut really looks like. ------------------------ Can I get an O-H-I-O!!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! I'm a little late in publishing our Christmas pics, but better late than never --- right? So here is a quick recap of our holiday season...


Cameron got a basketball hoop from Santa Clause. He's really good at the slam dunks! His sister on the other hand is learning to dribble and daddy has already taught her the proper form for a layup .... just hope they don't expect me to play one-on-one in the future!

Anna on the other hand wrote to Santa Clause asking him for a princess babydoll - and since she stayed on Santa's "good" list last year she received not only a princess babydoll, but and entire princess baby set complete with crib, swing, bathing station and so much more!

Here they are playing their cool new V-Tech video game system they got from grandma and grandpa. It took some learning to use the joy-stick, but she's gotten the hang of it. Luckily Cameron "plays" along side her thinking it's him doing all the movements, hopefully that will last a little while.

We've had trouble lately with Cameron wanting to play dress-up, and having an older sister means there are only princess dresses to wear. So for Christmas he got a number of boy dress-up outfits including the pirates that you see above. Arrrrgghhh!!!

And then my favorite gift of all is the GeoTrax automatic train set. This has to be the coolest train set out there. The pieces actually stay locked together and you can build huge ramps and stuff. Then there's the remote-control train that goes on it --- too cool! If you're in the market for a train, I definetly recommend it!!! Five Stars!!!!!