Happy Birthday!!

Just one more thing (for today!). Today is my mom's birthday, so I just want to wish her a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Hope you have a great day, Mom! :)

SOLD!

We finally sold our house in Marion!! We closed this past Monday (a week ago today), so we can finally start house-shopping here in Wauseon! We're pretty excited! (And a little sad about the house in Indiana, but we're not moving back, so it's nice to sell it!) I'm not sure when we'll purchase something in Ohio, but we've started looking some. We went to a couple of open houses yesterday. There was one house that was really neat...I liked it quite a bit! We'll see what happens. We need to keep looking just to see what else is still available! :)

More updates...

Here are a few more updates and pictures! :)

March 25th was my birthday, so Jason surprised me by taking me out to dinner.

He took me to a restaurant in Toledo called Rockwell's. It was a fantastic surprise...especially since he told me we were dressing up! :) We had a wonderful evening out!

That same weekend, my friend Kristi got engaged! Her now-fiance Travis had called me a couple of weeks prior to the big day to enlist my help. Kristi and I arranged a "girl's day out" to go get manicures and pedicures in Indianapolis. While we were gone, Travis was busy decorating her living room with over 80 tulips and a BUNCH of candles. Her living room was beautiful when we got back!

Kristi and me...on our way to get manicures and pedicures!

Kristi getting her pedicure. They were so relaxing! :)

The big proposal! Travis met Kristi at the door...and even had a little sign for her to circle her answer. (I guess that way he had it in writing, LOL!)

Also, over Easter weekend, Jason and I took a former student of his, Dave, to New York City! We had an awesome time and did TONS of walking! We were able to see a couple of shows, which was fantastic! We saw Spamalot (Monty Python) Friday evening and Rent on Saturday evening. Both shows were great!!! Spamalot was hilarious!! They had spoofs from the movies and some new stuff too. We all loved it! Rent was also really good. I've never seen the stage performance of Rent, just the movie. The Broadway production was really good!!!

A picture from Central Park in NYC...

On Thursday, we went to the Metropolital Museum of Art. They had some neat stuff. Also, we saw some art students in the museum painting copies of some of the paintings. The artist above did a great job on his! I stood and watched him for several minutes. Very cool! :)

On Friday, we decided to get up early and stand outside the Today Show. It was SO cold that morning!! We were more than happy to leave and get some coffee! :)

This is me standing in the line to get in. The guys weren't thrilled and wouldn't even smile, so I'm not posting their pictures! :)

Matt Lauer and Anne Curry did a piece in front of us. They didn't spend much time outside because it was so cold, but I did get a chance to shake Matt's hand! Woohoo! :) We were also able to get on TV briefly, but no one (that I know of) taped it. Bummer!

A really neat building in Times Square!

Other fun things from that trip: We visited many of the typical touristy spots in NYC...Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Financial District, Times Square, and Central Park. We also took a tour of the NBC Studios. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but we got to see where they film The Nightly News with Brian Williams, Saturday Night Live, and Conan O'Brien. It was amazing how small the studios were! They shared some of the tricks they use to make the studios look bigger to the home audience. We also spent some time at the UN Building. We didn't take the tour, but it was still neat to be there. We definitely had good times on the trip! :)

Argh!

I'll have to post more pictures later...Blogger isn't letting me upload any more pictures at the moment. :(

What's to come:
-My birthday
-Kristi's engagement
-Our trip to NYC
-Our house

I'll try again later! :) Have a happy Monday!

Fire!!

Hey, all!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I've tried logging on several times, but they have updated Blogger and this is the first time I've been able to get logged in since the changes. I'll post a couple of times to get all of the updates!

The most recent news is a fire that destroyed a vital section of downtown Wauseon over the weekend. We got a phone call at the house around 4:45am Saturday morning that downtown Wauseon was on fire. Jeff and Melinda's office is downtown and we weren't sure what was going on exactly, so we quickly threw on some clothes and headed downtown. We could look out our back doors and see the orange glow from downtown from where we live.

We got downtown to find that the fire was across the street from Jeff and Melinda's office. The fire start at Doc Holliday's (a restaurant where the Robinson family frequently eats) and quickly spread to the surrounding buildings. It destroyed several businesses: Welles Bowen Real Estate, Doc Holliday's, Shaw's Clothing, JBW Computer, the Health Food Store, a Spanish church, another tea or coffee shop (I think), and Gallippo's Photography.

This is what we saw when we first got downtown:

When we realized Shaw's clothing store was on fire, the reality of it all suddenly hit a VERY personal note. Jason's sister, Teresa, is getting married May 12th. She had her wedding dress at Shaw's for alterations. When we saw Shaw's burning like this, we thought for sure that her dress was gone. Fortunately, though, we found out later that the owners were able to get in the store for a few minutes to save what they could. The store owner's wife, Cheryl, was able to save some wedding gowns and prom dresses--including Teresa's! In fact, if you look in the Toledo Blade, there is a picture of one of the wedding dresses saved. It's Teresa's dress. :)

Also, (ironically) the family and bridesmaids were planning a wedding shower for Jake and Teresa Saturday night. The shower was supposed to be upstairs at Doc Hollidays. The family had a busy morning/afternoon replanning an entire wedding shower. (It all came together wonderfully and was a good time!)

Some more pictures from the fire:

Newspaper reports said that firefighters pumped over 2 million gallons of water on the fire. Wauseon doesn't have that much water, so trucks were bringing water from nearby communities and filling these pools so there was enough water to fight the fire. I've heard that there were over 300 firefighers called in (some from Michigan, even!) and nearly two dozen departments. It was amazing looking down Fulton St.--all you could see were fire trucks and firefighters!

Another plume of smoke. The whole town smelled like smoke for two days! (I haven't been downtown today to see if it still smells like smoke.) Fortunately, there was a fire wall between Welles Bowen and Hammontree's, so the fire didn't spread any further that way.

The smoke down Elm St. This is where the church and Gallippo's were located. The further you worked you way around the building, the more smoke there was.

The smoke from the back side of the building. We were the only ones back there (go figure!).

A firefighter fighting the fire from above...

The aftermath. This is the white building that was on the corner of Fulton and Elm. They finally had to demolish it in order to put the fire out. Most of these buildings were 100+ years old.

This is what used to be Shaw's Clothing (the brown building to the left) and to the right, the Health Food Store (along with the church and Gallippo's). The whole building is gone now.

The mayor is meeting with a task force this morning to discuss rebuilding and what to do next. Hopefully, they are able to rebuild this section on town!