Fridays CAN Be Fun! ;)

I started off the day by waking up to a head of hair that had apparently been through a battle royale overnight; my Spanish genes apparently came out victorious after I'd gone to sleep on wet hair... curls for Friday it was!

And then there was the matter of appropriate and sufficient caffeination:

^ This little guy sparked a variety of comments, from my sweet friends complimenting the lion's mane, to Rob, of course, who attempted and succeeded at borrowing a spot in the limelight of my post. My question: Who wore it better?! ♥♥

who wore it best? 

I didn't realize until after I'd posted this that Mare, aaaalll the way over there in Vermont, was having a similar Stanley-fueled morning:

I have such like-minded friends ♥♥...

Work was a blur, like it usually is, but I have a renewed energy in me this week, I think due mostly to the fact that I'll have a support person back here on the staffing side in just one more week. I can hang on until then, I'm pretty sure.

And just in case I wasn't sure, my team and I were pleasantly but completely surprised when the Pizza Hut delivery guy came sweeping into our office, clad with two pizzas that had been bought and sent to us by one of our truck-driving associates.

I mean... we have an incredible crew of associates who work for us, but it's times like this that stressful weeks remind me that the people we're helping are looking out for us too. You know who you are, sir, and we want to say thanks to YOU!!

many, many thanks!! :) 

The successes of today were not small, nor infrequent. We're feeling a bit ragged I'm sure, but not in vain. My team is amazing :).

The day didn't end at 5:00 - it was far from it! I mentioned earlier that we'd won a sales contest; it's a big deal for us, given that we're in the running for this against 8 other local offices, and we only have 1 staffing consultant right now. It's a team effort, and it's paid off! We celebrated tonight with dinner at Hofbrahaus, followed by a comedy show at Funnybone.

express cinci central (& co.) 

Whew. What a night! Yes, this is backdated; we pulled up to the house around 1am, and straight to bed it was for me; an early morning and a 4-hour drive to Cleveland awaited me on the other side. 

Happy Friday, and happy weekend to each of you out there. Enjoy!! 

xo | cmd

All-Over Saturday

Hello, weekend!

I guess I should go ahead and disclose now that Taste of Belgium is currently serving their seasonal gingerbread waffles, and... well, GO.

yum! 

Nom nom nom nommmm!
We took our time today, getting through our to-do list at home. I had originally slated us a trip to IKEA for some Christmas shopping; Rob jumped the gun and went ahead and ordered everything online. That saved us both the drive there and the "fun" of traipsing through the pool of lawless goldfish that is the typical IKEA in-store experience. *Whew!

Oh, and Rob christened our house with the first fire of the year, while I started in on another knitting project today: This one's for Jess!

fireside knitting ♥

Stella was less-than-impressed with the fact that my knitting needles were getting more attention than she was, and have, for the past couple of weeks.

awhhh.. love you, pup-pup.. 

Poor girl. I promise that once Christmas is over, the knitting will cease to take up every evening. Okie? ;)

Trish invited us to join her and some friends in Newport, so on a last minute decision we obliged, meeting her and some coworkers at Hofbrahaus on the Levee.

:) :) 

Always a fun time (:
It's been a while since I've visited Hofbrahaus, and Rob's first time there, so we'll naturally be back. I couldn't tell you the last time I actually went to Arnies, either, but that happened, and was a blast in itself.

♥♥♥

We made a lot of good decisions today. We also made some not-so-good decisions today. This is the worst of it, and while it seemed a wise choice at the time, I'm making a note for next time [like I usually say] to never let this happen again:

yes... yes that is lucy blue's.... :/ 

All around I think that's a win. Happy Saturday! 

xo | cmd 

Dick's Last Resort

I don't frequent Newport much anymore these days, which is something of a shame, as there are plenty of fun little digs around there now. I haven't been to Hofbrahaus once this year, which I know... is disappointing. It really is.

Tonight Rob and I decided we'd head south to Newport and see where the night landed us. Our resting spot at the last minute was Dick's Last Resort, a joint famous for staff that can purposefully exercise sarcasm and teasing.

dick's last resort | newport, ky 

One of the trademarks at Dick's is receiving a hat.
It's not a fancy hat [well, I suppose that depends on your general outlook], but in case you've never been or are curious as to the stuff these folks come up with...

uhhhhh... thanks? 

It's definitely not an atmosphere for the faint of heart or easily-offended, but the food was decent and it was a sassy little experience that was fun to do at least once.

In more mundane news, here's the newest addition to the arsenal of colors in the closet:

river rock! 

It doesn't take much to entertain me; really, it doesn't ;).

See ya next time!

xo | cmd 

Newport Aquarium & Stanbery Park

We had a blast today.
Between Nana & Pappy's visit with us to the Newport Aquarium, followed by lunch and a romp in the park, we are a tuckered-out little duo.

I gave the D90 some exercise today as we journied through the land of fishies, sharks & all things quirky at the aquarium.

Here's that story:


rawr.

^ We'll start with the first reason Sydni was excited to get to the NA today. Haha. My four-year-old wanted to see the sharks. I'm thankful that we're past the phase of being terrified by them swimming up to the glass, so I gladly embraced her request to stand in the water tunnels for ten minutes each. Hah.

shark rays

more sharks & shark-esque creatures..

We found some divers in the shark tanks..

up close & personal

.. so Sydni wanted to give it a whirl.

shark petting

^ Close enough. Haha. We'll take an actual dive with some swimmers when she gets the hang of the whole swimming thing herself. We're super close, but just not quite there yet.

lionfish

My personal favorites - pufferfish!

awhhh ;)

We found beautiful creatures everywhere. There were dots, spots, stripes, squiggles and all kinds of other patterns. 

spots & patterns everywhere!

And things that glowed in the dark..

jellyfish gardens!

And things that live in the dark... which, btw NA, you may want to move the No Flash Photography sign a bit lower... Luckily I knew this but there were plenty of folks today that certainly didn't see it. Poor octopus :/

octopus!

We saw some distant relatives, too - some who travel by land, and some by sea.

shelled beauties!

.. And some who do both (:


emperor penguins

taking a break to photograph a couple humans on the adventure

There's always of course at least one celebrity:

"mighty mike"

^ We found a sun-bathing groupie croc on the upper deck of Mighty Mike's tank; Mighty Mike is the 800-lb, 14-ft-long alligator who travels to various aquariums for us to admire. Sydni is about the size of his head. Crazy!

my girl ♥

I snagged at least one picture with mini before we called it a day at the aquarium. Our next stop was lunch at Bar Louie and then on home to unwind for a little bit before my parents had to head back home. The weather forecast has been buzzing with nothing but warnings for this impending winter storm, so Nana & Pappy made sure to get their driving out of the way before it all started to settle in. We'll see them again soon.

To ease the abrupt absence of Nana & Pappy, Sydni and I decided to squeeze just a little more juice out of the beautiful weather. We trekked the whole mile or so up the road to the park and spent the last few hours of daylight romping around the playground.

she's so busy!

love. those. smiles.

I have no complaints on the day, other than selfishly,  I wish Rob had been here to enjoy it all with us. There will be plenty of others, though. (:

From us to you, happy weekend!!!

i love you, forever & ever.

xo | cmd

Who Needs Professional Movers?!

Anna and I were feeling generous today, so we left the privelage of the bulky stuff to the boys: 

booom. bring on the heavy lifting.

^^ & yes, that's a total load of hogwash. While Anna and I did somehow manage to hoist some pieces that may've appeared to outweigh our abilities, by no means did we do the majority of the moving. Haha. No way. We'll take credit where it's due, but I'll definitely give it to the guys for practically clearing this thing out within a couple of hours. I have no idea how they managed to get those three big ticket items [toolbox, air compressor, pool table slates] up into the truck in the first place, but I'm thankful nobody was injured loading or unloading.

With the exception of a small portion of things still back in Rob's Illinois house, he's moved. The truck, 4-wheeler and Harley come later (:

To celebrate, we said to heck with healthy and made a beeline to Newport for some Bar Louie. Nobody complained.

lumberjack invasion...

Rob has a few things to wrap up tomorrow morning before he and the others head back to Illinois. For now, we're relaxing and not doing much of anything, save for resting up. It's back to the real world tomorrow, whatever that means (:

G'Nite!

xo | cmd

BOOM. Saturday.

Rob & Kyle are here [I still can only half believe that, for some reason..].
Kyle has never been to Cincinnati before.
Erego, Kyle has never had Taste of Belgium for breakfast before.

Don't worry... we fixed it.

a round for the table, please!

It was a no-brainer this morning when we finally got moving; Kyle never having visited Cincinnati before obviously meant he'd never had the full TOB experience [aka, chicken & waffles, from TOB]. We met up with Catie & Andy in the drab, half-sputtering weather downtown at TOB and introduced Kyle to this magnificent course. They sat us at the kitchen table, which is even more interesting for any trip there.

Plus, this awkwardly-statured gnome?

catie: "nice gnome?"
kyle: "too bad that's not a syrup dispenser"
catie: "that'd be genius. here's what it would look like if it were."

... It really doesn't take much to entertain us. (:
After breakfast, we all parted ways, partially due to the weather being monochromatic and... blah.. and the other part of it being that we just wanted to relax. We knew there would be a long night ahead of us, so we all headed home. At mine, we parked ourselves on the couch and watched Iron Man 3, this time without the descriptive services turned on, thank you very much.... Haha.

We hung out at the house for most of the early afternoon, and finally pulled ourselves together near dinner time. Rob wanted to show Kyle Newport, so we went off in that direction, of course taking a detour/pitstop up to the overlook.

kyle & rob | overlook @ eden park | cincinnati, oh

kyle on the wall lookin' at kentucky
overlook @ eden park | cincinnati, oh

We decided on dinner at Bar Louie Newport, joined by Catie & Andy, and afterwards back up to Norwood to Nader's place. His house is once again the common meeting grounds. Lauren met us there, and the cluster of us made a united decision that we wouldn't miss Oktoberfest two nights in a row.

Listermann Brewery it was!


oktoberfest!
nader. andy. kyle. rob. catie. lauren. cori
listermann brewery | cincinnati, oh

these girls! ♥ [+ photobombing rob in the back]
listermann brewery | cincinnati, oh

favorites (:
listermann brewery | cincinnati, oh

ermagersh.. cerggert! ;)
listermann brewery | otr - cincinnati

After Oktoberfest, it was probably the most comfortable decision to head into OTR, to the usual digs.. with the usual people.. PLUS VISITORS! I love that Rob & Kyle are here this weekend!

What I love even more, is how [& we just realized this this weekend] much alike Nader & Kyle are, not only in stature and eerily enough facial features, but in personality, too. They are just about the white and brown version of the same person. I guess everyone's got one, huh? Haha.

.. never met two un-related people who are more
similiar head to toe and inside-out.
rheinhaus | otr - cincinnati, oh

i. love. these. people.
rob. cori. kyle. catie.
rheinhaus | otr - cincinnati, oh

I have some downright knockout people in my life, and I'm so thankful for them. I didn't get to see all of them tonight but it's a healthy start (: It's been a whole day into this and I'm still a little off from the surprise of Rob coming out to see me. What I did to land this guy, I'm not sure, but I've never been anything but myself so I'll just keep doing that and hope he sticks around ;).  

can't get enough! ♥

So that's how we did an unplanned Saturday in Cincinnati. It wasn't entirely eventful, but I think we all had a good time, and that's all that matters. Next time, maybe I'll be able to actually plan some sort of outing (:

Anyway, we're done for the night .. even moreso than this entry is backdated :p

xo | cmd

Memorial Day, 2013

beautiful.

 It's Memorial Day, and I wanted to make sure that in the midst of aaaallll the fun we've had this weekend, that we payed homage to the most important part of it all. This was the second half of the day, but I'm sharing it first because it's the most important. When I posted this picture, I captioned it:

"I know she's little, but she will know about those who gave what they did so that she could have what she does. For those who gave ALL, and for all who we pray won't have to, THANK YOU. Happy Memorial Day."

I couldn't help but just sit and look at her, as she knelt patiently beside the rows of crosses, each individually tagged in remembrance of a soldier who never came home. She seemed to realize that it was something important, even though she doesn't grasp the gravity of it all just yet. She will one day, and I'll do everything I can to make sure she understands just how thankful we should all be, not just on Memorial Day, but every day. So to all of the men, women and families who have given to keep us safe and free, thank you.

Rewind now to the beginning of the day, which equaled Sydni and I taking a trip down to the Newport Aquarium! I honestly can't remember off the top of my head actually going to the NA ever before, although I'm sure we did, so it was something of an adventure for both of us.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

[MORE] Picture time!:

sharks!

my personal favorite : puffers :)

animal time

After the joy of the aquarium, we did lunch and a mini photo shoot to cap it off at Bar Louie at the Levee. I realized as soon as we ordered our food that I had meant to take us to Tom & Chee, but having been away from the Levee for a few years now, I completely forgot it was down there. Until today. Noted. Haha.

mini time ♥

Aquarium, lunch & some light errands completed, I toted a very sleepy Sydni back to Becky's for a short nap [or at least an attempt at such], before we refreshed and headed to the park for a little while before I dropped her back off.

I can't even convey in words how much I enjoyed this weekend with Sydni. I was thoroughly bummed that Rob wasn't be able to join all of us.. since it's a holiday and everyone had planned to be out and about, there was nobody left to watch the dogs at Rob's house, so he was tethered there. We were both pretty disappointed, but I have no doubt we'll make up for it as soon as possible. Syd asked about him all weekend long, and I've promised her that we'll all hang out again together very soon. He did send me a snapshot of his day though.... remember our trip to Ikea?

Looks like it's turning into useable furniture ;) So much for me lending a hand to get this built... I guess that happens though from being so far away. Oh well. I'm happy at least that I have a man who can put this kinda stuff together without killing himself or the next person to sit on it. Haha. Small silver linings.

I'm back at Becky's now, winding down for the night and kiiiiind of not looking forward to work tomorrow. It's not my job or the people, definitely not... it's just the whole principle of going back to work again after an amazing weekend, haha. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Oh well. I hope you had an incredible holiday weekend, too, friends!

xo | cmd