In the traditional spirit of our trips back to Ohio, we made 4 stops on this visit to the Buckeye state. After getting the oil changed and tires rotated on the Edge, we took off around noon on Friday to head to my dad's house. I had Friday off not because it was a company holiday (which seemed to be the case with a number of people I know), but rather because of my awesome flexible work schedule, which grants me every other Friday off. We got to my dad's a little after 4pm and had a very relaxing evening with him, just hanging out, drinking a few beers, eating a nice steak dinner, and catching up.
Clark slept pretty well in the unfamiliar house, but doesn't sleep in very late since he goes to bed around 7pm, so we were up and on the road pretty early Saturday morning heading for Newark, where we dropped Chewie off at Katie's parents' house then went out for breakfast at Tee Jaye's. While enjoying our country breakfasts Clark caught the eye of a couple 3 or 4 year old twin girls, who definitely took a shining to him. So much so, in fact, that one of them decided to come over and plant a full, open-mouth kiss on his lips as they were leaving. The germophobe in me cringed a little, but being a guy, I couldn't help but give the little dude a mental high-five for hooking up with an older chick. Clark's got game.
Later that afternoon we drove out a little east of the boonies to Paula & Rob Englert's house, where our friends Sam and Adam were hosting a first birthday party for their daughter McKenzie. The theme was "punk rock princess", which I didn't pick up on very quickly, despite McKenzie's awesome black and pink tutu (see below) and the skulls, hearts, musical notes and anarchy symbols all over all the decorations. Anyway the party was fun and McKenzie got a lot of pink cupcake icing all over her face. I've picked out a few of the pictures from the party below.
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| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
Clark rockin' some sweet shades with Adam
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| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
Kenzie with a liberal amount of icing on her face
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| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
Opening one of her presents with Erica
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| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
Reading one of her cards out loud to the group
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| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
The Miami alumni attendees plus Brad, the dirty Ohio Bobcat
.JPG) |
| From April - McKenzie's Birthday |
We went back to Vic & Barb's from the party and got ready for a Saturday night Easter dinner. Thanks everyone for accommodating our schedule! The ham and everything was great (especially Sarah Fenton's ice cream cake). Tom & Sara were there with their girls, as were the Fentons, Grammy Joyner and Grandpa Anderson, so it was quite a nice little family gathering.
Katie and I enjoyed a nice quiet evening playing dominoes with her parents, and she let me sleep in for a while on Sunday before we left town destined for my sister's place in Grove City, where we were due for a big Easter brunch. It was a pretty full house, with all of Joe's immediate family plus all of mine, but there was plenty of delicious food to go around... steak & eggs, fresh fruit, pound cake, cookies. Excellent. Clark was a total ham the entire time. I think he was so cocksure after getting kissed in the restaurant on Saturday that he thought he could work his charms on all of Joe's sisters. It almost worked.
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| From April |
Sara with some delicious candy-coated strawberries
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| From April |
Mom with baby Elizabeth
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| From April |
Clark and me
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| From April |
Clark getting ready to have his picture taken next to Elizabeth. He has to be handcuffed like this so that he doesn't reach out and grab her face the whole time.
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| From April |
This is the best shot I have of the two of them together. In all the other ones it seems like at least one of them is crying and/or one is falling over!
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| From April |
Clark is tired of being on stage
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| From April |
And Elizabeth is recovering from that ordeal too
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| From April |
We stopped by the house that Dittoe has under contract on our way back to Indy Sunday afternoon, and were very impressed. It has a huge back deck and a hot tub that might be repairable, so it could be a prime new gathering spot!
This week hasn't been too exciting. Katie babysat Josie and Tessa last night so that Tom & Sara could take in a Pacers game from a luxury suite, and right now she's with our bible study group while I'm on Clark duty. This weekend will hopefully be pretty tame... Katie's participating in a 5K run/walk Saturday morning, so I'll be watching Clark but otherwise my only ambition is to maybe get some of my yard work tasks off of my to-do list.
One last thing (Barb you can stop reading here) - we've been dealing with a little mouse problem in our garage for the last few weeks. I now have four mouse-icides on my conscience, the most recent coming by way of a glue trap. I'm not happy about that, but I also do not regret it. This message goes out to all mousedom - know that I harbor no ill will to you or your kind, and that I did not take these lives out of sport or spite. You are simply not welcome in my house (or garage), and I reserve the right to exterminate you when you try to live in my walls, especially when you leave like 45 times your body weight in poop strewn about the floor behind the furnace. Unacceptable.
Since the fourth mouse fell to my glue covered instrument of death and I cleaned up all the droppings from the garage, we have seen no evidence of more intruders, nor will we tolerate any.
That's it. This ended up being longer than I anticipated. I guess I find it easier to sit down and crank out a post like this than to do Twitter-style microblogging.
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