Christmas and Birthday!

What a whirlwind week!  On Christmas Eve Kevin and I (and the puppies) headed up to Medina to my parents house.  Before we left our house, I had to get some pictures of our Christmas tree with all the gifts underneath.  (I took these at 6:30 AM, since our dogs have no concept of sleeping in :-))

After relaxing for a bit, Kevin and I got cleaned up and packed the car (well...Kevin packed the car).  With dogs in tow, off to Medina we went!  When we got there, we just sat around chit-chatting, watched "It's a Wonderful Life", and headed off to dinner in downtown Cleveland.  We go to the same place every year called San Souci, which is in the Renaissance Hotel.  We had such a great meal!!  (My dad took lots of pictures, but I don't have any yet to post!)

The next morning we woke up, unwrapped gifts, and headed to Pittsburgh around 1 PM.  It was pouring during the entire drive.  Kevin and I were both thankful it wasn't snow!  That would have been a mess!  We had a great Christmas there and headed back to Columbus on Saturday afternoon. 

Here's Mullen with a pretty bow!

Bono is tired!

Yesterday was my Birthday.  Unfortunately, I had to work...but fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who spoils me rotten!  Kevin came to work yesterday at lunch and brought me a veggie wrap and we had lunch together.  Then when I got home, he took me out for sushi (my favorite!).  We went to Benihana, which is one of our favorite places to get sushi.  We sat at the sushi bar, and the chef (Chang) was the same one we had last time we were there.  Kevin told him that it was my birthday, and jokingly said that he needed to make a sushi cake, and he did!

Here's my sushi "cake"

He also made me a rose.  The rose was made out of tuna and had wasabi leaves!  So pretty!

When we got home, Kevin gave me my birthday gifts.  He got me a pair of Ugg boots, Disney "Earth" on Blu-Ray, and of course Jelly Bellys!  But the best gift were the "tickets" he gave me:

These tickets are good for a birthday shopping spree at one (or more) of the places listed above.  I was cracking up!  The text at the bottom states:

"Transportation will leave at 9:30AM on Wednesday, December 30, 2009.  After breakfast at Mimi's Cafe on Polaris Parkway, you will re-board the shopping shuttle and present your driver with any combination of these three shopping spree tickets which will then determine your destination(s) for shopping.  Enjoy!

I thought this was the cutest and most creative gift ever.  I have the best hubby! :)  Can't wait to shop tomorrow!!

Torture!

....is the perfect way to describe the three days of work before the Christmas holiday.  Unfortunately, I have somehow burned through all my PTO this year and have had to work the 21st, 22nd, and part of the day on the 23rd.  What makes it even worse, is I work in an office of about 40 people, and I believe right now there are less than 10 of us here.  It makes for a REALLY, REALLY long day, especially when my job is largely based on other people submitting work to me.  There is not a whole lot for me to do when no one is here to give me work!

And another thing, I have been racking my brain on how exactly I went through three weeks of vacation time this year!  Note to self for next year, taking a half-day here and a day there really adds up.  What all did I use it on you ask?  I have to take inventory myself :)

Well, I do actually keep a calendar of every day I have off, so I can at least narrow it down somewhat...
in early May I took two sick days due to a monstrous sinus infection. :-)

One day in May to go to Cedar Point with my favorite hubby!

Yes, and we actually did ride the big coaster (Top Thrill Dragster).  It's 17 seconds of pure terror and excitement!  It's truly something else to be looking straight down from 400 feet up in the air!

I took July 13th off as a precautionary measure.  I was in my friend Gail's wedding this year, and she had her bachelorette party the 10th-12th in Put-In-Bay.  Basically it was a weekend of going out, having drinks, hanging out with the girls, and having fun!  Due to the amount of fun we were planning on having, I wasn't sure whether I would be up to making it to work on Monday.  I would have been :), but it was really nice to have the day off regardless...

Here is the bride and bridesmaids starting the party off right!

Here are the Ohio University girls before we went out on Saturday night!  (It was definitely more tame for me due to the fact I got SO burned that day!)

The next day I took off was the Friday before Gail's wedding.  Well, I of course needed time to get a mani-pedi, and get up to Cleveland for the rehearsal dinner!  It was a perfect weekend, a little warm, but sunny and beautiful!  The church was in my hometown of Olmsted Falls, OH.  Kevin and I got to the church a little early the night of the rehearsal, so we could walk down and see the house I grew up in.  It brought back so many memories!  What a great weekend :)

Brian and Gail at the church - just hitched!

The Bride and Bridesmaid's at the reception

(no...I wasn't actually drinking out of the bottle, the bartender was just too slow to fill my drink! :))

Kevin, me and my parents at the reception!

The next time I took off was the entire week for Kevin and my anniversary trip to Disney World!  What a blast!  Kevin and I both agreed, hands down, that it was the best vacation we ever had!

All details on this trip are located at: http://kevandmarion.blogspot.com/2009/10/walt-disney-world-anniversary-trip.html!

Of course, when we returned from Orlando, I got my customary horrendous sinus infection.  This time it was coupled with stomach issues!  Ugh...another day wasted on being sick :(

I also had to take off a day for our trip to Tampa and St. Pete to see U2!  What a fabulous trip!  We loved western Florida, and are hoping to return for another visit soon!

Well, that was a brief run-down of time off for this year.  Actually, it was nice to have a little year in review! :)  We did a ton in 2009!  Now we're looking forward to a fun 2010! :-)

The Holiday Season has officially arrived!

We have been so super busy!  We had Thanksgiving at our house this year.  My parents came down to see how well we (well, Kevin) could cook a turkey.  It came out awesome (from what I was told!!)  The sides were great too.  We had the typical Thanksgiving side dishes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry jello, green bean casserole, and fresh baked rolls.  Yes, this is the first time I have made rolls from scratch and they came out pretty good.

Here's my table, that seems more like Christmas than Thanksgiving...Oh well!

The day after Thanksgiving was Kevin's birthday.  It also happened to be my friend Gail's husband's birthday, and our friend Helen's on Saturday. Everyone came down to visit and we had planned to go out to a Japanese restaurant and celebrate.  It was so much fun!  We went to Benihana and had a great time.  It was so good to see everyone.

Our Chef!

Our group, Andy, Helen, Brian, Gail, Ashley, Kevin, and me!

Kevin and I :)

Last night we decided to really get into the Christmas spirit and went to Wildlights at the Columbus Zoo.  It was COLD, but beautiful.  It's so nice to be able to walk around outside under all the lights, and you can even go inside some of the buildings (definitely a nice break from the cold!)

Love the lights!

Kevin and I...yep, it was cold!!

Santa was feeding the fish :)

This is Kevin and my favorite animal at the zoo....the manatee!

Kevin nicknamed this guy Crush.  He was hilarious to watch!

Yeah, I wouldn't be anywhere near that snake if there wasn't solid glass between him and I!!

Still have Christmas shopping to do and cookies to bake!  It's going to be a busy couple weeks :)

Christmas Card Rejects

I haven't written an entry in a while, and I have so many new fun things to tell.  I promise I will write a new one this weekend!!

I just had to share these few pictures.  We just ordered our Christmas Cards (photo cards like we always do.)  Here are a few that didn't make the cut, but are hilarious...well at least hilarious in my opinion!

Here's Bono looking like he's about to complain about taking too many pictures....

I hate this!!!!

Can you tell we were enticing the fat cat with treats?!?!?

We got some good pictures, and hopefully our cards will come in with enough time to send them out before Christmas!

On another note, my wonderful hubby just turned the big 3-2 last week!  Happy Birthday Babe!  I love you :)

Hmmm...wonder who got him that nice sweater... ;-)

Oh Bono....

So, lately we've noticed Bono (our dog) has been acting strange.  It started about a year ago when he would bark at men in public, almost acting like he was afraid of them.  At first since it always happened when he was with me, and I thought he was just trying to protect me.  Then it started happening when Kevin had him out too.   We really didn't think too much of it.  Then, this summer we started noticing that certain things would make him nervous...people on skateboards and rollerblades, trucks, thunder, leaves floating across the yard...basically everything! 

A few weeks before we went to Disney World,we were at home on a Saturday afternoon.  I was upstairs when all of a sudden I heard barking and tons of racket downstairs.  I went down to see what was going on, and Kevin told me he was outside on the porch talking to one of the neighbor kids, when our neighbor's dog came up on our porch.  Bono DID NOT like this at all, and proceeded to go through the screen in one of our front windows.  Luckily Kevin was there and stopped anything from getting out of hand.  We just wrote it off to the fact that he was not happy about another dog being on his territory while he was inside.

When we were on vacation to Disney World and St. Pete, we sent the dogs to "camp".  They go to this great place in Delaware called My-T-Fine Kennels.  Bono and Mullen share a run, and they also get 2 hours of 'playtime' each day in a fenced off area.  When we picked them up, Sue the owner, told us that Bono acted antisocial a few times during playtime, but would eventually warm up and play with the other dogs.

Here's Bono and Mullen together at camp:

Here's Bono looking tentative about approaching this other dog:

Well, basically everything came to a head a few weeks ago we tried to take Bono and Mullen for a walk around the neighborhood.  We hit the end of the driveway and Bono would not go any further.  He was pulling back so hard he almost pulled right out of his collar.  Kevin thought that he would try to carry him a few steps just to show him everything was ok, and that didn't work either.  He was terrified to go for a walk.  This finally prompted us to call our trainer that we went to when both dogs were puppies.  We've gone to two sessions with her, and she's as confused as we are.  She says that she's never seen a dog act quite like this before.  Finally she suggested that it may be best to put him on Prozac temporarily to even him out!  A dog on PROZAC?!?!  Oh Bono, you never cease to amaze me....

Who me??????

On a sad note, my boss Michelle's husband passed away on Monday after a long battle with cancer.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family....

Happy Halloween!

We had a wonderful weekend at home! The local meteorologists were predicting rain all day on Friday, so I took Mullen first thing in the morning for a 3.5 mile hike at Highbanks MetroPark. We had a blast. I definitely wore her out...which isn't necessarily a bad thing!

It actually ended up being a gorgeous day on Friday!  It was 80 degrees and sunny in the afternoon.  Kevin even took Edge (the cat), for a walk around the house.  I had to take pictures, because it was hilarious!!!

And just so you don't think I forgot about him...here's a picture of Bono looking out the front window!

We missed the Halloween parties last weekend while we were in Pittsburgh, but even though we didn't dress up this year, we had a blast seeing all the kiddies dressed up during trick or treat!  Our trick-or-treat was on Saturday, so we carved pumpkins on Saturday afternoon (I ruined my first one, but Kevin was nice enough to run out at the 11th hour and get me another pumpkin to carve!)  Here was the result of pumpkin #2!

Kevin did the Grim Reaper:

All the houses at our end of the cul-de-sac got together and did a "One Stop Shop" Trick or Treat!  It was a lot of fun...but as you can see the weather was quite a bit cooler than the day before!

Me handing out candy:

Our neighbor Ed's crazy pumpkin:

Hilarious!!!

We all stayed out well after trick-or-treat was over and just hung out by the fire pit.  It was a fun night!  Hope you all had a great Halloween weekend as well!