Livin' in IKEA...

This is AWESOME! A guy in NYC is living in IKEA for a week. You can check out the videos on his website:

http://www.marklivesinikea.com/

He'll be there two more days!

Disappointment...

So, I don't normally get terribly upset when celebrity marriages don't work out, but I was HORRIBLY disppointed this weekend to hear that Hulk Hogan's wife had filed for divorce. I occasionally watch their reality show on VH1 (Hogan Knows Best) because I think they are actually really good parents (and quite entertaining!). Watching the show has given me a lot of respect for them because while they do a lot for their kids, they also work hard to make sure their kids are learning and being responsible (car crashes excluded!). Of course, we never know the full reasons why stuff like this happens, but I am really upset! (So upset that I was dreaming about it last night!)

*sigh*

Trunk or Treat

Our church did a Trunk or Treat this year for the kids. Jason and a friend of ours, Megan, decorated the back of his truck to hand out candy. Here are some pictures from that too!

Megan was an octopus! (We did an "under the sea" theme.)

A picture of the truck as we were setting up. We didn't have time to do everything that we wanted...and it wasn't the coolest vehicle there, but we had fun!

Megan and me. I was an electric eel...LOL! (I can't take credit for it--when I was a freshman in college, we decorated our unit and a girl there was an electric eel. I thought it was fun!)

This is the car next to us. Megan (not our Megan) climbed through the car and was in the trunk of her car. :)

Pictures

I woke up a few weeks ago to this amazing sunrise outside! (The fog just made it prettier!) Here are a few pictures!

I love our backyard! :)

Top Chef

I still can't believe this!!

Jason and I are avid watchers of Top Chef (on Bravo). Tonight was the reunion show for Season 3. They had a feature on their website where you can submit questions for the reunion show. Jason and I about lost it when they actually read MY question on national TV. They totally butchered the town I live in (really--is Wauseon THAT hard to pronounce?? LOL!) And, naturally, we were freaking out so much that we also missed the ANSWER to the question! LOL!

So, that's my excitement for the evening. Just thought I'd share that real quick!

Toy Poxer

Hehe...

So, tonight I'm a bit bored and thought I would look up pictures of toy fox terrier/pug mixes...just to see how different they can be. I learned the official title of the breed: Toy poxer. It is actually recognized by the American Canine Hybrid Club. The name cracks me up. I hear it and picture Bella covered with little red dots--probably because the first thing I think of when I hear "poxer" is "chicken pox". Who comes up with these hybrid names?? :)

Anyway, Bella is still doing great! Potty training is slowly coming along. She is even learning some new tricks! She can "sit" on command, so now we are working on some new ones.

Well, that's all for now! Have a great evening! :) (Bella's trying to help me type, so I have to go! LOL!)

Things I Hate...

-Puppy poo on my kitchen floor.
-Puppy poo behind the TV.
-Puppy poo in the family room.
-Basically, anything to do with puppy poo in my house. :) (And how can such a little puppy poop SO MUCH?????)

Things I Love:
-The way Bella wags her tail when she first sees me in the morning. (Her whole butt wags. :))
-The way her tongue curls when she yawns.
-The cute little sound she makes when she yawns.
-The way she curls up to sleep on/next to me while I work.
-The way she tries to sneak up on her toys. (SO CUTE!)
-The way her tail curls over her back when she's content.
-Puppy dreams (sometimes she barks in her sleep. :)).
-The way she sleeps on her back like a baby. :)

I LOVE this little girl!! :)

The New Girl...

I'd like to introduce the newest member of the Robinson household! :) This is Bella! She is an anniversary gift from Jason...and I think she is as cute as can be! :)

She is part pug and part toy fox terrier.

Jason completely surprised me with her. We have been talking about getting a puppy for a couple of weeks now. We thought we were going to try to get a Puggle (a cross between a pug and a beagle). There is a rescue shelter in town that we have been checking out online to see when they get some puggle puppies in. We saw pictures of a litter of pug/toy fox terriers and thought they were kinda cute. I was going to Kristi's bridal shower in Indianapolis on Saturday...and that day the shelter happened to have an adoption event at the Tractor Supply in town. Jason said he'd go check it out. He told me later that it was very disappointing and that they didn't have many puppies there.

Soooo...based on that, I thought it would be a few more weeks until we got a puppy. Jason called later that afternoon and said that his parents wanted us to stop by and pick up a box at their house. Since our anniversary was last weekend, I assumed that it was an anniversary gift. When I arrived, Jason informed me that he had been lying to me all day and led me into the living room (quite confused!) to where Bella was in her cage. It was a happy surprise! :)

Fortunately, she's been VERY good today!! I've been able to play with her some, but while I'm working, she will either entertain herself or nap beside me on the couch. I caught her napping today and snapped some cute pictures! She is napping again as I am writing this...and I'm pretty sure she is dreaming because she is barking very softly. :) Way too cute! :)

And I'll leave you with this super cute shot of my new baby girl! :) Is there anything sweeter than a sleeping puppy? *Awwww!* :)

Wedding is OVER! :)

This past weekend, Jason's sister Teresa got married. She asked me to take care of decorating the reception hall, so I have been busy for the past several weeks shopping for decorations and making centerpieces. We're all thrilled that it is over and the happy couple is married! :)

Here are some pictures from her big day:

This was sweet. Jeff kept looking at Teresa and would make little comments to make her giggle.

The entrance to the reception hall...

The hall. I was pretty impressed with how everything turned out. :) (Not to toot my own horn, but it turned out better than even I expected! LOL!)

The head table.

Another picture of the hall.

Their cake was actually really neat. It had a fountain under it with chutes to different levels of the cake. It was pretty cool! :)

Congrats to Teresa and Jake! (And it's nice to be able to get some rest this week! LOL!)

Our new house...

Jason and I are in the process of buying a house in Wauseon!! :)

We found a house a couple of weeks ago that we both loved! We looked at it on a Friday evening, came back Monday (and brought Jason's parents) and then made an offer Tuesday. After making our initial offer (and waiting the two loooooong days to find out if they accepted our offer), we learned that someone else had made an offer on the house too, so the couple selling the house said that we both needed to submit our best offer and they would decide who they were going to sell the house to. We did what we could and figured we weren't going to get the house. We even made a list of other houses that we wanted to look at that same night! LOL! But...our realtor called the next morning and said the house was ours. :) Yippee!!! He said it wasn't the best offer, but since the couple knows us (they're moving in across the street from Jason's parents), they wanted us to have the house.

The house is a ranch-style house with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. It also has an attached 2 car garage and a full basement that hasn't been finished, so we can eventually finish that for additional living space. We had an inspection done last week and I was able to take some good pictures of the place:

This is the back of the house and our back yard. I didn't get a picture of the front of the house (oops), but this is what the back looks like. The yard is a lot bigger than I thought it was!!! :)

This is our view of the back yard and the 11th hole on the golf course (The hole is blocked by the tree from this angle. :)). I took this picture from the family room in the house.

This is a picture of our patio. In the picture above, you can see the deck. The patio is just around the corner from the deck. I am REALLY excited to use both of these this summer!!! It will be really fun for barbeques and just sitting out enjoying the sunshine! :)

I think this is my favorite room in the house. The kitchen is BEAUTIFUL and very open. In this picture, I am standing in the family room looking back into the kitchen. If I wanted to, I could look from the kitchen all the way through the family room to the back yard. I love it! I'm really looking forward to spending a LOT of time in this area!!!

This is the rest of the kitchen area. We get to keep the table and chairs, which is really cool! They look great!!! I had started looking for a set to put there and haven't found anything that would look nearly so great! Brian (the guy selling the house) said they looked for a LONG time before they finally found a set that would look good there!

This is the living room. (Yeah, the big screen and the surround sound--which you can't see in this picture--stays. They didn't feel like moving it! LOL!) I think when we finally move in, this will be the barest room in the house. :) We're eventually going to have to get a new set of furniture, but I'm not sure when we'll do that.

This is the master bedroom. There is a bathroom off this room. I like the way she has decorated this room, but I think we're eventually going to repaint (it's way too dark for me! :)).

This is the second bedroom. (The window was damaged in the hail storm from a couple of weeks ago.) Before the window was broken, this room was very bright. It was a nice bedroom! It will be our guest room...probably until we start having kids. :)

This is the fireplace in the family room. This will be a lot of fun when it starts getting cold outside! It is a wood burning fireplace, so Jason is very excited to create fire. LOL! I think it's a man thing. :)

I'm going to meet with our realtor today and we'll probably set a closing date. I'm thinking it will probably be around the beginning of June (maybe the 4th or 5th). We'll be able to move shortly after that!! :) Sooo...if you're in the area, we'd love to have you stop by and hang out!

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!