Trip to West "By God" Virginia

We took a little getaway trip to West Virginia prior to Easter with most of the family. (We missed the # 2 guy and gal because he had to work and she was out of town.)

As always, we enjoyed being able to get together, have some time to chill-(we call this “front porch sittin’), and have the traditional LOROBI’S Pizza night!

Whenever we make a trip “home”, it just wouldn’t be the perfect trip without our Lorobi’s Pizza!

When I went on the internet to try to search for some info on Lorobi’s, all I could find was several plain address listings and this review page. I was reading the review and agreeing totally with the statements and then I realized that the reviewer was our niece!

(Great review Melissa aka: greengoddess85-otherwise know as our niece). She is a real fan and has even taken frozen Lorboi’s home to Wisconsin in the past.

Teddy got to have his first Lorobi’s experience:

You can tell he is a true member of the family because he liked as much as everyone else does!!

We didn’t really do anything noteworthy on our trip but we definitely like having all the family members take time from their busy schedules to get together. We were glad that Guy # 3 and his gal could get away from school and get to come!

It is always a little crazy with all the dogs (5 at one point!), people to feed (19 at one point), and babies to watch (1 little Teddy Bear!) It was good seeing the relatives and catching up.

As a side note regarding the trip: the weather was really rainy and we had lots of tractor-tailer “mist” to deal with…not my idea of a good time.

I do give extra bonus points to the hubby because he let me listen to a book on tape while we were driving in. I gotta confess that it was a romance CD and it was a real enlightening experience for him. (I'd tell you the title to the CD but I'm not sure either one of us would live that down!!)

He said at one point that he thought the CD was really boring (we didn’t get to the “good” parts while he was listening-haha!). I was surprised that I didn’t hear more sarcastic remarks about the book from him.

I did have to chuckle though because he totally got lost in the relationships and asked a question about the heroine “Gabby”. I started explaining and he said, and I quote, “How in the world did you get all of that out of what we just listened to??”

Needless to say, I put him out of his misery and let him listen to his music shortly after that!!

Baby’s Best Friend and Talent Show

So here are the babies in the family… “Playing” together with Aunt Courtney keeping watch:

I love the size of Gisele’s paw in comparison to Teddy!!

Teddy was pretty enthralled with the dog’s foot, but Aunt Courtney kept all in line…including keeping Gisele’s paw out of Teddy’s mouth.

This weekend was also the annual talent show at the high school on Friday night.

We had quite the crew here for that event along with 4 dogs.

Uncle Gary, Ashley, Darren, (or Barren, or Darrell or whatever his name is...) were here to help with the talent show. Along with Jeffrey, Jessy and Avery, the other beagle.

Darren's name did provide some comic relief over the weekend because it was universally mangled (all right...I'll admit...more by me than anyone...but in my defense...even Chipotle wrote it down as "Barren" and they had a copy of the faxed order with the correct name in writing! The family knows I have a "name" problem!)

I have to admit that the talent show this year seemed to have less talent...but we always still enjoy the show. Baby Teddy was digging it and even learned to clap at the show!

Congratulations go to Maddie (the singer in the OBB Hotel California video) for winning her area of competition this year!

It was a lot of fun and here is the stage crew, sound crew, and general supporters, minus Becky & Teddy (past his bedtime when this was taken.-Michal and Courtney were also missing since they were home with Gisele.):

It was crazy this weekend when all the dogs were here. And pretty amazing how much Gisele and Maddy look alike...other than their size, speed, and ears, their coloring is pretty close, except for a patch of white around Gisele's neck. Maddy can certainly run fast and we are still waiting to see how Gisele runs. She was a little tentative with all the other dogs.

Lucy is definitely the queen and she pretty much runs the show in terms of "don't mess with me!"

Avery brings up the rear but she is really able to hold her own in most cases.

Anyway, the dogs are "Teddy baby's best friends" and we had a great time this weekend with all the activity!!

BIG WEEK for the second Guy!

As weeks go, it would probably rank right up there with “life changing” for guy #2!

It started out with buying a new engagement ring. (Like the commercial-“He bought it a Jared’s!”). And it is a real beauty:

Next came: Asking the father-in-law-to-be for his daughter’s hand in marriage. If I understand this part correctly, his reply was “Yeah, take her!” He then asked his father-in-law-to-be’s advice about telling the “other sisters” about the upcoming engagement. The father-in-law-to-be reportedly said, “What? Are you nuts? They can’t keep a secret!” So Guy #2 decided he better wait until the question was fait a compli.

Next up: A vacation trip to Mexico. It was a romantic setting on Valentine’s Day to pop the question to his lovely bride-to-be. The bride-to-be cried and said “YES!”

She said she was really surprised and had not expected him to ask her then. She said she felt bad because she had been giving him a hard time earlier in the day because of travel tiredness, room assignment problems, and Guy #2 being quiet earlier in the day. (maybe from planning the big question?). Fortunately, all went well and we are thrilled to have a new upcoming daughter-in-law!! We all love her to death and are happy that she will be a member of our family.

The happy couple:

On top of all that: the newly engaged couple got a “new baby in the family”. After their return from Mexico, they brought home, Gisele, the great dane, that is 6 months old. She is a very well behaved puppy, is house broken, crate trained , and basically trained with several commands. She is also BIG!! They are very cute with her, worrying about leaving her home, buying toys and such. It is fun to watch!!

And last in the BIG week events was: Guy#2’s birthday! We all got together and celebrated all the new happenings for the week, including Grandpa’s birthday too!

Baby Teddy got in the action and was enjoying the birthday bag:
He is a pretty cute birthday present!!

Anyway, Guy #2 definitely had a BIG WEEK and we are so excited about all the new changes in the family. Stay tuned for wedding plans, more Teddy pics, more Gisele news and all the great things happening in the future!

Welcome to the family Courtney!