Pancake Breakfast Time

One of our favorite times of year is Pancake Breakfast Time. Halfway through February till halfway through April, we wake up on Sunday mornings and head out to a pancake breakfast. We have several places we go to, out in Burton to "the guys" (VFW), the firemen, the upstairs of a falling apart restaurant, and our favorite and cheapest West Geauga High School. We love our pancakes and fresh maple syrup! Afterwards, to work off breakfast, we always take Koby to a new park and hike around! Here's our 2nd last trip to Pancake Breakfast at the upstairs of the falling apart restaurant in Burton.

Lazy dog feeling fast...

Enterance to Pancakes!

MMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Geodesic Dome (says Robb) ASM Corporation

Hiking at the West Woods: Me and only my dog's looking

Pretty rocks, dog drinking fountain, and rocks

Robb being adventurous

My Babies

I love when I can touch all three of my four boys at once!

My 28th Birthday!

This year I had a wonderful birthday! It all started on the Friday before, one of my very best friends, Jill, took me to Bahama Breeze (our favorite, can't wait to go in June) for a very special treat for me! (Thanks so much :o) We celebrated with yummy pina coladas, strawberry dacquiri's, and a perfectly cooked caribbean dinner! To top it off we were treated to a fabulous hot chocolate lava pineapple upside down cake. Oh yum! Check out her blog at doudican.blogspot.com to see the photos. (I stole this one off there, but go see the yummy cake and a cute Saint Patrick's Day baby!)

Jill and me at Bahama Breeze

Then on the night before my birthday, Robb asked me if I had to work the next day, and I really didn't, so he said he had a surprise place to take me! We had to leave by 7:30 the next morning, and ended up at a Bob Evans (yum). Waiting there for us was his sister Kendra, and some of her friends all dressed in green. I had no clue, what we were doing that day, so I wore teal. I had a great breakfast including a happy birthday cupcake. We headed out to none other than the annual Cleveland Saint Patrick's Day parade! We took the rapid downtown, and met up with Robb's mom at the House of Blues. It was very fun to hang out there and then when the parade started we went outside the street to watch. After the parade, the rapid was way to crowded, so we took a nice long walk through the city, across this bridge over the river, and just walked to the next rapid station to go home. It was an absolutely perfect 70*, sunny day! The best weather in years! Thanks honey! It was so fun!

Me and my Honey

Here comes the Rapid

Kendra and friends in green

Go Tribe!

Mmmm, drive over here!!!

Ohhh and then the best part! That next Saturday Robb and I celebrated together by bringing one of my favorite restaurants, Melt Bar and Grilled http://www.meltbarandgrilled.com/, and duplicating our entire expreiance at home. We went out that day and got fresh baked bread, three kinds of cheese, ham, and turkey and made the most wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches! It was complete with fresh cut fries and coleslaw, not forgetting my favorite, Young's Chocolate Stout to drink. But what birthday would be complete without my favorite cake, yellow with chocolate icing! Robb got the best cake with pudding in the mix, and made me a perfect heart shaped fully decorated cake! My favorite!

"I can ice cakes with my eyes closed!"

Voila!

Big Explosion

So here we are in the kitchen on January 28th, making Lion's Head Meatballs (Chinese) at about 9:30 at night, and BOOM!!!! I mean the loudest noise ever, shook the whole house, dog and cats scrambled for cover, the whole bit! We had no clue what that BOOM was, and Robb quickly washed his hand, and ran outside. All I could think was something huge exploded. I didn't know if a plane crashed in our backyard, a tree fell on our house, or a power plant blew up...should we start to evacuate? This was so much stronger than any of the recent earthquakes that we had. So, outside all the neighbors were wondering what that was too, and no one could see anything. All of a sudden, more firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances that I even knew existed, were whizzing past our street all to stop about a 1/4 mile down the road. So, next thing I knew, Robb (Mr. Loves Destroyed in Seconds) was getting in the car to drive to where the emergency vehicles were stopped. Despite my better judgement, off he went, through the development behind our house, and called as he was running through some peoples backyard so he could see. He said, "a house blew up! There's nothing left!" Sure enough, that's what happened. Turns out a house just down the road filled with natural gas completely exploded, and there was nothing at all left. The houses around them had their windows blown out, garage doors blown off, and the one directly next door has to be rebuilt as it was blown off it's foundation! There were 2 older people in the home at the time of the explosion, and 2 passer-by's rescued them. The man was literally sitting in his recliner and around him the house was just leveled. Amazingly he is still alive, but his wife who was buried in another room, didn't survive the blast after being taken to the hospital. The most amazing thing was that they later found their dog, in what was the basement, completely unharmed. Here's some pictures we took in the daylight... Craziest thing we ever saw!

Frasier Fir****Christmas 2008

So in Maine, there are so many fantastic smelling balsam fir trees that Mainers traditionally use for their christmas trees. In the spirit of our vacation, we decided that we wanted a balsam fir tree for us this year. When we searched for a place that we could cut our special tree down, it turns out that balsam trees don't grow in Ohio. But, good news, frasier firs are the cousin of balsam firs, and they can grow in Ohio. Possibly originating from the same tree, they've adapted to different climates and don't overlap where they grow. Balsams grow in more northern areas of the country (like Maine), and frasiers grow more south(Ohio).

Off we went to Mountain Creek Tree Farm (http://www.mountaincreektrees.com/) to get our frasier fir christmas tree. We love to go there because they let Koby come with us. He loves to run around the christmas tree field, it's probably one of his absolute favorite things to do in his whole life.We got my favorite christmas tree ever of my whole life. This tree is incredible. It's soft as can be, holds ornaments extremely well, and it has barely lost any needles after all this time. Plus, it smells fantastic!

Our tree is decorated with 1000 lights, which I weaved in and out the tree. It took 3 days, but it is SO sparkely! We have lots of ornaments on it, we get new ones every year. I got a few this year, a moose, a pretty brown and gold sparkely glass ball, and even got Koby a really cool one with his name on it. Robb is still looking for his since he wants an animated one and they're hard to find.

Here it is!!!

Mountain Creek Tree Farm

Going home on the Jeep

Close up.. those tips are what smell so good

Before

Putting up the 1000 lights!

Koby's Ornament

My christmas kitties under the tree

Mantle Parts

Robb Will write about it later.

Welcome Aidan Charles Chambers

Congratulations to Stacy and Ryan who had their first little baby boy on November 14th, 2008! I finally got to meet my little Aidan this Sunday, and the pictures don't do him any justice. He is cute as can be! I can't believe how much hair he has already, I love it! Here's a few cute pictures of him, and please check out Aidan's very own blog http://aidancharleschambers.shutterfly.com/ (also a link at the bottom of our page) Funny short story...Both my best friends, Jill and Stacy had their babies this year. Jill's son is named Braden Charles, and Stacy's son is named Aidan Charles. Go figure! I guess I'll have to name my little boy (no I'm not even close to being pregnant) Jaden or something else that rhymes. Ha ha, love it!