We moved over the weekend. We were in a ranch before, and now have a colonial. I like the bedrooms upstairs, but now there is a door in the kitchen that closes off the steps to the basement. Since the cat's litter boxes are in the basement, we got a cat door so they could just hop thru it and we wouldn't have to leave that door open all the time. Well, my cats are so massive that I had to get a plus size cat door. Seriously!!

And when one moves to Parma, you must have a pink flamingo:

Then there are these guys. My mom was sure my dad was losing his marbles, when he yelled that there were ducks on my new tree lawn. Not really something you see everyday. Turns out he was right and the ducks have been back everyday since then. There's a pond very close to our house so I'm assuming that that is their home and they just stopped by for a visit. It's a male & female pair of mallards, who I've heard mate for life. Very cute :-)

Stuff...

In no particular order here's some random stuff.

Ray & I bought a house in Parma!! Here's a picture of the outside. I'll post more pics once we close & get the keys (which should be in the next week or so). What a crazy process, buying a house. The paperwork alone is enough to make you say, "forget it, I'll go back and live with my mom"!!! And now you've got the government involved so it's twice as ridiculous! However, as much as I may not agree with it, I'll be happy to take my $8,000 in Obama money!

So I get home on Friday and after going into the bathroom I'm convinced that my husband may be trying to kill or at the very least seriously injure me. Here's a picture of my vanity, note the drill that is pointed right at eye level when one bends down to wash her face before bed. Seriously??? I'm so clumsy I could have easily lost sight in my right eye with that thing!! I guess the upside is the bottles of 409 and Goo Gone also left by the sink. Either he was cleaning up the mess he made with the drill or going to wipe up the blood after I hurt myself. (The real story is that Ray is painting all the wood work in the house & had to dismantle part of the bathroom window to paint it)

Here's the latest edition to our little family. As some of you know I had a black cat named Zen that we had to have put to sleep a few years ago. I was checking out some of the local shelter's websites and saw this guy. There's just something about a black cat. They look a little mysterious but he's the sweetest cat ever. We brought him home on New Year's eve and you would have thought he's lived here forever. He went around from person to person, jumping into their lap and just wanting to be loved & petted. We named him Toshi. In Japanese, Toshi loosely translates into "mirror image". We thought this was appropriate because he looks so much like Zen. He's also huge, weighing in at about 17 lbs.!!!

I needed a garbage bag and Toshi needed a place to hang out.

In honor of Dick Goddard (very ancient, local weather man), here is a "woolly bear" that showed up on our door step last fall. I thought he was cute & took his picture.

Saturday Night Snuggie Fun

We are hardly what you'd call party animals. We ordered take out from Melt and watched a movie. Here's Mark & Linda bundled up in the Snuggies I just had to buy because they matched our couches!

Hey, I'm pregnant and they are tired from remodeling their kitchen, this is about all we were up for.

Santa Claus is coming to...

Brooklyn??? A few weeks before Christmas I'm sitting in the living room watching reruns of Beverly Hills 90210, and I hear this really, really loud Christmas music. I'm not really sure where it's coming from, but Ray jumps up, throws open the front door & yells, "Santa is coming, get the camera!!" WTF???

Apparently ever since he was a kid (for those of you that don't know, we live in the house that he grew up in) the city puts Santa on the back of a 4-wheeler and drives him through the city blasting Christmas.

So this is what we saw come past the house:

Vegas Baby!!!

I covered the wedding, on to the honeymoon. I guess if you've seen one picture of Las Vegas, you've seen them all, so here is our side trip to the Hoover Dam. I would highly reccomend seeing it if you're ever in Vegas. It's about the distance from Cleveland to Akron and very cool!!

I love this picture! It was warm, we wern't at work, I still had a little bit of a tan from the wedding. Now its cold & gross outside :-(

Lake Mead

In the rocks is a bunker from WWII. While they were building the Damn, they started to think that they better protect it as it would be a good target for the enemy should they bring the war over here.

Colorado River

Ginormous bridge being built over the River. Half is on the Arizona side & half is on the Nevada side. Apparently the states argued over what to name the bridge and settled on O'Callaghan-Tillman Memorial Bridge. O'Callaghan was some old governor from Nevada, and Pat Tillman was the Arizona Cardinals football player who joined the army after 9-11 and was killed in Iraq. (Personally, I think they could have named the entire thing after Pat Tillman, because from what I've read about that governor, he didn't do anything earth shattering.)

The top of the Damn. It's impossible to get the entire thing in a picture, unless you're in a helicopter.

The power plant at the Damn.

I guess technically we made it to 2 states that day!



And that is how we spent our summer vacation:-)