1500 Miles later...

We are home! It was a long trip and lots of car time, but in the end worth it. Andrea made a wonderful, juicy turkey, yummy mashed taters and excellent stuffing (thanks Stovetop for the secret recipe). Julia loved her green frog toy that Uncle Mark picked out at Toys R Us - how were we to know Blues Clues is so out? The lady at the store was very helpful. The frog sings and talks and goes to bed with her. She loves to sing and watches TV so she can touch it - like the rest of us I'm sure glasses are in her very near future. Charlie is getting so big and voices his opinion at every turn - even told grandpa and Mark to go away. Very funny to hear that one.
Steve and Barry's is a favorite store of Mark's (along with Menards...) and he is sad they are going out of business so in each big city we had to find one and scout out some deals. Needless to say many of our relatives will be getting a cool gift in the near future. We hit them in South Bend, Cleveland, Rochester and Syracuse. Shopping in Cleveland was an adventure in diversity. I believe we were in South Euclid at a mall and we were in the minority and I think we got lucky to not be wearing any sort of gang signs. Mark was impressed that he didn't even notice - I pointed it out. If you ever have the need to visit the Cleveland Clinic you'll be happy to know there is a great hotel right on property - we stayed there thanks to a great Priceline deal. Heavenly bed. We did manage to find a Cheesecake Factory after the adventure in the mall at another shopping plaza about three miles away - that mall was really new and upscale. We ate at Stir Crazy and I had my favorite lettuce wraps - tasted just like PF Changs.
We helped Mark's parents put up the biggest tree ever - even had to cut off the top and part of the bottom. Looks great and smells wonderful. Mark got his snow finally on the way home today, but it was done by the time we got home - it's still really warm here.
So tomorrow is back to work...

No Snow Yet!

and I'm not cyring about it anytime soon! Mark is anxious for our first snowfall so he can break out his new snowblower. Me, I have yet to dig out my boots and am in no hurry to do so. I am enjoying the new climate and moderate temps for now. Last night we heard about a winter storm warning for our county and the one north of us - through tonight. Of course we won't be here if it does come this far south. I had to laugh when they talked about the higher elevations on the radio this morning - I always forget we now live near the mountains - never mind they call them hills. If they have high elevations they have to be mountains right? Who knows, all I know is we have yet to get any snow! Of course we might see some on our long journey half way across the country. I still can't believe we are driving to South Bend to eat turkey - it better be good turkey Andrea. The holiday has come up super fast on us.
Now for the fun part... we have yet to find the perfect gift for Charlie and his little sister Julia. Hoping to hit a Target or Walmart on our journey and pick up something fun for them. I'm sure it will be something Uncle Mark will really want because I know he's going to end up playing with it too! So if you have any good suggestions for a a brother-sister duo let me know! I did see this cute music video game type thing on tv last night - it looked like something that would hog up the tv and make lots of noise. I know Andrea loves noise! It would be fun though.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!

up goes the tree

The Christmas tree is up (the fake one) and the lights are on - well they are on it all the time, but I did plug them in. The cats love it. I'll get around to putting up a few decorations soon enough. Also the lights are up outside and that will delay putting in another motion light until spring I'm sure. The rest of the Christmas stuff... is mostly sitting in the living room waiting on the real tree in a couple weeks.
So did anyone beat me to getting up the tree? This is the earliest ever and is only because we are gone for Thanksgiving... Looking forward to seeing Julia and Charlie in South Bend and eating some turkey and tatters. With 24 hours in the car we have stocked up on DVD's and I also got two books on tape from the local library for when I get to drive - if I do. Saturday we went to sign up for a library card and I got two great new books as well - Janet Evanovich's latest - #14 I believe. Tiny little library, but a good selection of new reads.
Any suggestions of new books I may not have heard of???

Palin & Turkey's

I don't care who you voted for - this is so bad! She must be mortified!!! I tried to embed it, but no dice.
you will need to cut and paste this - it is worth your time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/27838743#27838743

unless the below link is now working:

Come Be A Teacher in NY - Marlboro that is!

Ok I am now thoroughly annoyed - not only did blogger kill my post when I hit post it deleted it so here goes... take two.
We have lots of fat in NY - lots. So much so that it's now time for people to start getting mad about something and in our area it is the school taxes. Huge deal. It's in the paper and it's all people talk about around here. We have a HS gym teacher making over $105k a year and the kicker - he is FAT! 400 pounds of fat! What a role model. He won't retire because then his ex-wife would get 1/2 his pension. Poor guy. Making that much you'd think he would have saved something. Can you imagine how much that pension will be? There are about 1700 students in our district and we have 25 teachers making over $100k a year - is it just me or isn't that a lot of money? There is one principal for every 100 students and once a month they get together and bake cupcakes for all the students. Sweet? Gag me please! So there is a now a watch group that has formed to fine tooth the upcoming budget. That's all fine and dandy, but they don't start from scratch every year they just take the budget from the year before and add to it.
Oh and remember how in high school or junior high if you played sports and your parents had to come pick you up? Well here there are four nightly bus runs. How great is that? One for the do-nothings, one for the school clubs, one for those getting tutoring and one for the sports teams. Huh? Whatever. That is absolutely out of control. As you can see they've had free rein on the budget for quite some time. And the graduation and off to college ratio... you'd expect Harvard or Yale. Nope - nothing better than most schools in Michigan.
Add this to my list of what to check out before buying a house!

The New Noise in our House

After waiting over two months for the call Mark finally heard that he was accepted as a volunteer firefighter in our little village. He was a volunteer as a teenager and through college. Michigan really doesn't have much in the way of volunteer fire fighters of this nature so he missed it when we lived there. With NY you can go on the calls you choose to go on and they usually have enough to cover the fire. Milton is pretty small so there aren't many calls. So far this year - up until this past week they've had 83 calls (or something close to that) and he was told on Tuesday at drill night to not expect a call for about three weeks. Well, Wednesday he went on two calls and today it went off at about noon for a dryer fire. He was just home from the gym and wearing shorts and t-shirt and out the door he runs. I was told pants weren't needed as they give him his stuff to wear. His goal is to make the first truck - so far he's made the 2nd truck.
So that new noise in our house... it's the black box that goes off to tell him there is a call. After a piercing whistle sound it then gives the details so you can decide if you are going. 10:30 p.m. Wednesday we had our first blast out of bed - I need to figure out how to turn it down a notch. I'm sure I'll get a good sweaty picture of him to post soon.