Help Me Decide...

Okay, as I promised yesterday, I got two new pairs of sandals and I can only keep one.  I need you to help me decide which one to keep.  The purpose for this sandal is to wear when I want a casual sandal but not as casual as my Clark sandal.  I want to wear it with a summer dress or a pair of shorts out for dinner.  You get the point.

Here they are in no particular order. 

This shoe has a little bit of a heel on it and is very comfortable.  I like that it is black around my toes.  I am afraid it might be a tad too dressy. 

This shoe is totally flat and is also very comfortable.  I am concerned that since it is white around my toes that might get dirty and not be so cute.  It is kind of a suede feeling material. 

I wish I knew how to do one of those instant polls where I could get the results immediately as we all know that patience is not a virtue I possess, but leave a comment or if that doesn't work, send me an email at onethirdacrewoods@gmail.com. 

Thanks for your help!  I will let you know the answer in the next day or two. 

It's Getting, Getting, Getting Kind of Crazy!

It is days like today that I live in Ohio.  Okay, that and my 20 relatives that won't come to a warmer climate with me.  We all know that I can't move anywhere without them. 

Today the high temperature has been 80 degrees with low humidity.  Colin and I walked down to Handles for ice cream.  (If you don't have a Handles ice cream stand by you, I feel sorry for you, it is GREAT!)  I love to spend time with him, and the extra added bonus of getting some exercise in the fresh air without sweating through my clothes made it all the better.

We have been sitting on our back porch all day and just finished dinner.  That is really nice now that I don't have to worry that the roof is going to cave in on me.  I am writing this post while each of us gets to choose a song to listen to.  Colin chose Another One Bites the Dust, Ryan chose Ghostbusters, I chose You're My Best Friend, and Dave did Wanted Dead or Alive.  We are so predictable. 

It has been insanely busy for the last couple of weeks and I feel like I am finally getting my head back above water.  The end of summer break is in sight and that means that Ryan is finally going to full day kindergarten.  After 11.5 years I will finally be done paying for daycare.  Holy Cow Am I Excited! 

Finally, I got a new pair of shoes from Zappo's.  Can I tell you how much I love this website?  Again, I am not getting anything from Zappo's to tell you this, but they have revolutionized the way I buy shoes.  I wear a 9 AA.  Growing up is was usually a slim.  I had to wear old lady shoes my whole life.  Now I can go on the site, say I want a black strappy sandal in my size and it pops up with all the choices.  I then narrowed it down to heal height and it popped up with about 20 choices.  They had it to me the next day and has free shipping to me and back if I don't like them.  Tomorrow I will show you my two choices and let you pick which are cuter. 

Until then, I am going to enjoy the rest of the day.  It will soon be back in the 90's with 95% humidity.  If I didn't have such a strong policy against sleeping outside, I might just sleep on my deck.  Don't worry, the fresh air has not gone to my head.  I will just sleep with the windows open in my Luxurious-Queen-Sized-Stickley-Bed.  That is a story for another day. 

The Wilds

Life has gotten away from me.  It has been a wild and crazy ride the last few weeks, but that is not what I am talking about today.  Last week we went to a little gem of Ohio called The Wilds.  It is 10,000 acres of wild animals in as close to their natural habitats as possible allowed to roam free. 

So Dave got up on Thursday of his vacation week and once again didn't want to sit around on his day off, so he decided that we should drive 2.5 hours away to the middle of nowhere so we could drive around what amounts to a reclaimed strip mine.  I have been incredibly busy with my other life and the laundry is around my ears.  All I wanted to do was stay home and get some stuff done.  This was not to be and we set off on yet another adventure. 

First we called William and convinced him to come with us.  William wants to study animals in their natural habitat and has mentioned about 45+ times how much he loved going there and how he would like to go back.   We headed to get him and then had 3 hours to get to our destination.  Our GPS told us it would be 2 hours and 15 minutes so we headed out thinking that we would get something to eat on the way.  Again, to make a very long story short, (please just trust me on this) we got to our destination with about 10 minutes to spare. 

We chose to ride the open air bus to see the sites.  The other option was an air conditioned bus, but on the recommendation of the staff, we decided to eat the dust and sweat through our clothes to take the tour.  I am so glad we did.  We had a great tour guide/bus driver names Leeann.  It was her third summer working there and you could tell that she knew the animals, the history of the reserve and that she loved what she was doing.  Her enthusiasm was infectious.

We drove around the preserve and got to see all kinds of animals including, but not limited to, two different kinds of rhinos, camels, giraffes, all different kinds of deer, antelope, ostrich, , cheetah and zebras.  Every time I looked somewhere else there were different kinds of animals to see. 

I am not doing this justice, but I suggest that you go see it for yourself.  I am not getting anything for posting this, but I want to share the good things they are doing and right here in Ohio. 

The Not-So-Beautiful Part of the Day

Okay people, I do realize that I am 40.  I am making the assumption that I am no longer hip and happening.  Okay, who am I kidding?  I was never really hip and happening.  There is one thing that I do know.  It is not now, nor was it ever, cool to have your thong showing above your pants.  Quite frankly, underwear preference of a total stranger is not something I want to know about.  This is exactly why we wanted to control who we sat by and didn't want to sell our extra U2 tickets on Craig's List. 

A Beautiful Day...

Last Tuesday was a day nine months in the making.  It started last October when Dave was surfing the net talking about bands he would like to see.  As luck would have it, he went to the U2 site and discovered that they had added a final date to the 360 Degree tour, AND IT WAS IN PITTSBURGH,  a mere two hour drive from here.  A few phone calls later and we had Ann and Bob and Mary Beth and John on board.  We joined the fan club so we could get tickets before the lowly general public, and we were on. 

At Thanksgiving we thought it might be a good idea to try to get a hotel room so I started to call around.  To my dismay, all the hotels close to Heinz Field were already sold out.  It was eight months away, who would think that the hotels would already be gone?  We were lucky enough to get three rooms at the Hampton Inn where, on the map, it looked like a delightful summer's night stroll away from the venue. 

Fast forward to a week before the concert when Mary Beth called to tell me that she would not be able to go.  I was really disappointed, but both MB and John have very demanding jobs with somewhat unpredictable schedules.  Who knew that accountant's schedules would be that way.  We had to go With or Without them. That put us on the hunt for two people that would take the tickets that we actually wanted to sit with.  This proved harder than I would have thought.  In fact, small wars have been waged with less calls back and forth between myself and Ann.  To make a very long story short (you are going to have to take my word for it) we ended up with Lauren's boyfriend Mike, and my friend/neighbor, Lisa.

We packed our bags, figured out who was riding with whom, (I told Dave we needed the third seat.  Now maybe he will believe me next time!) and headed east to Pittsburgh!

We got to our hotel and immediately discovered we had a problem.  Instead of 2 double beds we had one king.  If we would have had our original group this would have been preferred.  With the group we ended up with it was not as desirable.  We ended up having the girls plus Will (my 16 year old nephew) on a cot, and the boys plus Mike in the other room.  After we got that all sorted out, we  decided to walk to the restaurant to eat dinner and then head over to Heinz Field.  Remember when I said that it looked like a nice evening stroll?  Guess what?  It was more like a hilly marathon.  On our way to the concert our leader was thinking that we were going to miss the opening band.  It felt like we were doing a 5k in sandals.  My feet were killing me!

Let me tell you, if I would have had to walk 5 times as far to get there, it would have been totally worth it!  There are certain bands growing up that I have dreamt of seeing live.  The Eagles, The Who, Queen, and U2 to name a few.  I have been to The Eagles, The Who, and now U2.  You would think that after being on tour for that long they would sound worn out, but they sounded way better than their recordings.  There is really no good way for me to describe the show.  It was lights, special effects, a great stage, and even better music.  Holy Cow, Bono oozes charisma, and The Edge is no slouch either. They played for almost three hours and had about 4 encores.  They played every song I like but one, and some that I have never heard before.  In short, it will be the concert that all other concerts will be compared to.  I mean really, check this out:

Once the concert was over, of course there were no cabs to take us back to our hotel.  We took the trek back and were all in good spirits after such an amazing concert.  All told, our delightful summer's night stroll was a 6.1 mile hike.  It took about 3 days for my feet to recover. 

The next morning we went down to breakfast and one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was when Lauren saw William texting.  It was around 10:00 and Lauren said, "William, who are you texting, nobody is awake at this hour."  I said that the way she said that you would think it was the middle of the night.  Will replied, "you would have a better chance of getting a reply in the middle of the night."  Perhaps this is why vampires have become such a big cultural phenomenon.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

This week Dave was on vacation, and as he has pointed out to me, he was not going to sit around all day when he could be out doing fun stuff.  This would account for why I haven't posted in a while.  When he is at work, I am at work, and since I never talk about my work on my blog, I haven't really had much to blog about.  Since he has been home I have not had any time. 

On Monday we went to the Cleveland Zoo.  Their big new attraction is the Elephant Crossing.  For the past several years our elephants have been in Columbus while they built them a new habitat.  It was a very small area and kind of pathetic.  Now it is really amazing.  It seems like they are really close, and in one area you can feed them through a tube.  Ryan had a meltdown because I didn't let him put the quarter in the machine.  Yet one more reason why I am a mean mom and I don't let the kids do anything.  From there we proceeded to ride the train around the Australian Outback and ride a camel.  Yes, you read that right, the mean mom that doesn't allow her kids to do anything, not only let them ride a camel, BUT DAVE AND I RODE IT TOO!

From there we went into the Rain Forest where the humid 80 degrees felt like air conditioning.  This is Colin's favorite part of the zoo, and I was actively trying to talk him out of it.  It was in the opposite direction and I was trying to get to the African Safari to see the giraffes.  As it turns out, the Rain Forest was my favorite part.  They had a baby orangutan that was so animated we watched for about 20 minutes.  He was sitting on his mom's lap and then would antagonize one of the others to get a reaction.  In short, he was acting like a toddler.  As soon as the situation got under control he would start up again.  It sounds like Colin and Ryan at any given time, but it seemed funny when I was not the one that had to break it up. 

We walked for what the boys seemed to think was forever and got to see the rest of the animals.  It was a really hot day and they held up well under the circumstances. As we were driving home and laughing about the orangutans again I realized, this is what the American Dream is all about.  These are the days I should cherish.  It really doesn't get any better than this.

Last Week Wrap-Up

In all the excitement of getting ready for Ryan's party, I forgot to mention a few of the more mundane things from last week that I can't really believe I am excited about. 

1.  We got a new garbage disposal.  To most people this would not be a big deal, but as I may have mentioned, Dave and I have no useful skills when it comes to fixing things around our house.  About two months ago Dave turned it on and it emitted the most horrific sound to ever come out of one of my appliances.  It was a cross between a grinding and a screech.  I thought a washcloth might have found its way down there so I decided to check it out.  A quick looky-lou confirmed that alas, that was not the case, and I declared it dead.  It was at that time that we were officially broke as well so the replacement had to wait.  Let me just tell you a garbage disposal is one of those things that you won't ever miss until it is gone.  A call to Golden Dog Plumbing (I highly recommend them!) and I have a new one that is so quiet you can hardly hear it. 

2.  It was about this time that one of my neighbors got a new chain saw and wanted to try it out on one of my trees.  Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, Dave had cut down everything in our yard.  We are currently without landscaping.  Since we were left with a bunch of stumps we had to call someone to grind them out.  When he came he told us one of our trees in our one-third acre woods was dead and in danger of crashing down on our porch.  The same porch that I just paid a gazillion dollars to get repaired because the roof was rotten and in danger of caving in on us.  (Hence the reason for being broke.)  We got the tree taken out, another one thinned out/trimmed, and all our stumps out.  Now as soon as we get some more money we can start to rebuild the landscaping with things that we like instead of things that were there when the house was built 20 years ago. 

I know to most people this is not all that exciting, but I am really happy with my boring little life in northeastern Ohio.  I can hardly wait to see what this week has in store for me.