The Melt

Saturday I ventured to the Cleveland area to get together for a friends birthday. I love whenever I get the chance to see my girls and was thrilled that we would be celebrating her birthday at a fun restaurant in Cleveland. The place is called Melt Bar & Grilled and they specialize in grilled cheese. I am a huge fan of grilled cheese and I thought the concept of a restaurant devoted to this sandwich was pretty nifty. The atmosphere has a hip, laid back vibe with walls plastered with random pictures and the menus are on the back of old record covers. The seating is limited and this required us to have a three and half hour wait. Seems crazy long right? Well, not so much. With a great group of friends and some amazing drinks from the bar, the wait went quickly. I had the best mojito's of my life there and even ventured out to try one with lavender. It was delicious. After the wait we finally had a table and wasted no time ordering or grilled cheese selections. I decided to pick the "kindergarten", fitting right? It was two huge sandwiches with your pick of cheese. I chose the smoked gouda cheese. Each sandwich comes with a side of fair like fries and coleslaw. It was the best grilled cheese of my life. I choose a simple sandwich for my first time but they have at least 20 different grilled cheese to pick from with any cheese and toppings you can think of. If you are ever in the Cleveland area I highly recommend you visiting The Melt. The restaurant was even featured on Man vs. Food and should be airing sometime in June.
It was a great night spent at the restaurant and I enjoyed being with my girls and getting to spend some time with the birthday girl's adorable daughter. She is 10 months old and so stinking cute and such a happy baby. The evening and visit was a success and I will definitely be visiting The Melt again.

Happy Hour

Tonight Chris and I went to Park Street Patio for a happy hour that was won by a good friend of ours. For the happy hour which is from 4-8 you get money for a bar tab depending on how many people show up. For every five people that come to your happy hour you get $100 with a max of $1000. It was a great time. A lot of fun peeps showed up and there was plenty of free boozes flowing for everyone. Lovesick Radio was there to play to. We only heard two songs and then they got off the stage for a later time. Well, it started to rain. I take that back, not just rain, it poured. We went inside for a while to wait out the rain, but after a while we decided to all call it a night. I needed a canoe or boat to get to the car. The streets flooded and you could barely see anything through all the freaking rain. Still, it was a great night. The patio is really cool outside and there are plenty of places to get your drink on there. I love spending time with this group of people and always enjoy seeing them. I feel the more we hang out the closer we get and the more fun we have. I love having such a diverse, fun, and caring group of people to talk to and enjoy spending time with. I'm grateful for these individuals and am grateful that I feel we are all getting closer and I know that I can talk to them and lean on them through anything. I'm looking forward to our next shindig when we all get together to laugh and have a great time. Thank you Angie for the happy hour and happy birthday hun!!!

A couple pictures from the evening. Yes, Chris did get drunk :)





My new favorite picture of Chris and I. Those are my new spectacles to, which I have to wear everyday now.

Shenanigans

This weekend turned out to be a pretty good weekend. I laughed a lot, drank a decent amount, and had fun. I was happy to get to have lunch with my best friend on Sat. We were able to catch up on things and plan our next girls weekend together. Which I am pleased to announce will be in two weeks. I spent the rest of Sat with Chris, Daniel, and Sadie. We went up to the condo and took the pontoon out on the water for a while. It's so relaxing to boat around and chillax. After our boating fun we went back to the condo to hang out. At one point Daniel was messing around on his laptop and pulled up Photo Booth. For those of you who have the privilege of a web-cam or built in cam to your laptop this app is freaking hilarious. There are all kinds of options that you can use to warp your face or make you look like you have an identical twin. We were laughing so hard that at times it was hard to catch our breath and I had tears streaming down my face. It's moments like these that I love and am happy we were able to experience this as a fam. It was also a relief to laugh and take our mind off of some of the hard things and sad things that our happening in our' life right now. It will all work out and be ok and this was a chance to realize that. Enjoy the brief montage of our Photo Booth shenanigans.

Girl's Weekend

It is always nice to end a stressful and long week with a fun and relaxing weekend. My best friend Laura came into town on Friday for a girls weekend and catching up on news and what's going on in each others lives. She could of not picked a better weekend to come. The stress of preparing and taking my Praxis III took a tole on me this week and I was delighted to have her to unwind with and have fun. On Friday after dinner we headed over to Easton to shop around and see a movie. We decided to see Taken and have a drink before the movie at MoJo lounge. I had already seen the movie but was looking forward to seeing it again. It's a great action movie and Liam Neeson is mighty hot with his bad ass skills in the movie. It was a great flick to see with Laura.
On Saturday we headed out to Polaris mall to continue our shopping trip. I like how Polaris has different and unique stores compared to Easton. It's convenient to have two great malls so close to home that have such different atmospheres and stores to choose from. We decided after our shopping that it would be nice to get a manicure. It had been forever since I've had one and I was relieved to have a fresh set of looking nails. After our manicures we head down to Germain Village and went to Schmidt's for linner.( a cross between lunch and dinner). Laura had been looking forward to eating here because of her love for Germain food and the fact that she recently got back from Austria a few months ago after studying there for a year. We ordered our drinks and meals and talked about old times and new events. The weekend was great and I was glad I could unwind and distress with Laura.

The front of Schmidt's.


A closer look


Laura ordered a Germain beer and I ordered Root Beer. They look exactly the same. That is one extremely dark beer!

Festive Weekend..

It has been a great couple of days. Friday I had a Valentine's Party at school for my kindergartners. Valentine's sure has changes since I was their age in school. I can remember little cards that I would write each of my classmates name on, seal in an envelope, and take to school to pass out. These days the cards come with pencils, stickers, tatoos, candy, and who knows what else. They are all extremly cute and festive. The children had a wonderful time passing out their hand picked cards for each of their classmates. We then had a little party filled with cupcakes, candy, and punch. I was amazed at how many snacks parents sent in for our little Valentine's celebration. I'm glad we did the party on a Friday so I could send them home all sugared up and have a three day weekend for them to calm down :)
After school on Friday my husband and I celebrated our Valentine's date together. We went out to dinner at our favarite restaurant The Cheesecake Factory and then saw "He's Just Not That Into You." The dinner was really nice and the movie is very cute, funny, and packed full of great actors and acrtresses. It was a great movie to watch for our Valentine's date. We celebrated on Friday because one of my best friends from college came into town on Saturday with her husband to visit. I've not seen her since Christmas and she is pregnant and I was so excited to see her with her cute pregnant belly and hear how things are going. We had a wonderful time hanging out, catching up, and shopping for baby items. It was great seeing them again.
Today we celebrated my husbands 30th birthday with family. His actual birthday isn't unti tomorrow, but today we did the famly thing for his birhthdy. Dinner followed by cake and icecream at our house. It was a nice time to have both families together. Tomorrow I am off of school for President's Day and my husband took the day off for his birthday. We are going to go out to lunch and shop around. I am excited for him to enter this next milestone in his life and I hope his birthday is a great one. Next week I am throwing a big 30th birthday party for him at our house with all of his friends. It has been a busy weekend so far, but lots of fun!

4th of July Festivities

4th of July is such an awesome summer holiday and I am glad we were able to celebrate it for three days. The fun started on the 3rd with Red, White, and Boom! I was not looking forward to it at first because it was such a rainy and gloomy day. At about 5:00 p.m. we loaded up the car and headed downtown. Chris had passes for the sponsor tent, so we were able to have free food and alcohol. We waited there for a while and then my parents and brother came to join us. Dad enjoyed the free beer and had a good time with the beer. We stayed there for a little while longer and then went down to the river and met up with Shawn and the rest of the gang to watch the fireworks. Shawn was able to nab a sweet spot for all of us to sit at. It was right in front of the area where they set the fireworks off and right on the river. The fireworks were awesome and the music was great that went along with it. After the fireworks we packed up and waited in a traffic jam a little bit before we finally were able to make it home. 

On the 4th we woke up early to go to the Whitehall parade. I had a hard time waking up because of the stupid rain again. Chris bribed me with getting starbucks and off we went. We arrived at the parade and it stared to rain again. Umbrella and Sloopy in hand we sat down and enjoyed a good small town parade with Chris' mom and other family friends. After the parade we headed  home to meet my parents for lunch. We all went to Max and Erma's to enjoy a nice lunch. I rode home with my mom and dad while Chris went over to his mom and dad's to help them set up for a cookout for later in the day. We got back to my house and I realized that none of us had keys. So, we turned around and headed over to the in-laws to pick up a key. When we turned into our subdivision we noticed this strange white bird walking down the street. When we got a closer look we discovered it was a wild turkey walking down our street! This is not something you see everyday in Blacklick, Ohio! After some relaxing we all piled in the car and headed over to the in-laws' house for a cookout. Chris and I rocked out the cornhole game. It was fun.

Today on the 5th we had our BBC party. I was really excited to see everybody again and to get together for a party. I was happy that all the girls showed up and we were able to all hang out. It has been a long time since I've seen all of them and it was so nice to be together again. I miss being able to easily  hang out with them and I wish I was able to talk more to them and socialize. That is the hard part when you are playing hostess--trying to socialize with everyone. During the party there was a stray dog that showed up. She was an older dog and really friendly. Chris called the animal shelter to pick her up to see if her owners were looking for her. Jarrod and Holly said that if she is not claimed in a couple of days they are going to go get her. I felt bad for the dog but we wanted to make sure her owners found her. After some more drinking, cornhole, and socializing the party was over and everyone headed home. I had a great time seeing everybody and enjoying the festivities over the past three days. It is such a fun time of the year and a great time to be with friends and family.

Pictures From the Three Day Celebration

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