Gwynne's (almost) 8th Birthday!!!

Today the family celebrated our niece, Gwynne's, 8th birthday!  She wanted a chocolate and vanilla cake with strawberries in the middle and strawberry icing and by golly that's what she got!  It was a verrrrry Hannah Montana birthday for her...she got tons of cool HM stuff!  She also got really cool iron-on beads from grandma!

Gwynne's beautiful pink birthday cake made by mom Alicia!

Mom cutting the cake...the girls can hardly wait to dig in!

Gwynne and Rowan enjoying their cake!

Rowan REALLY enjoying her cake!

Awwww...Sammy wikes his wittle cake and ice cweam too!

The first of many Hannah Montana presents!

About 5 seconds before Gwynne opens Grandma's 10,000 piece iron-on beads gift...

About 5 seconds after Gwynne opens Grandma's 10,000 piece iron-on beads gift!

The guys hard at work repairing the girls' playhouse that was damaged by the tornado.

"Man, what are we going to do with the other 78 of these barrel nuts?"

"Um, you guys do know that there are different length bolts, right?"

[aside] "Stupid EE's"

Rowan smiling her special "Rowan" smile!

Check out the Birthday Girl blowing out her candles!!!

Now that's a BIG UGLY!

Last night, in an early celebration of Megan and my birthdays we went to Bub's, mostly so that we might be amused as Sam battled the BIG UGLY!  If you're not familiar with Bub's, the Big Ugly is a 1 pound (that's 1 lb. AFTER cooking) cheeseburger that consists of 3 slices of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, and a 1/2 pound bun!  If you can finish the Big Ugly then you get your picture taken and placed up on the Big Ugly Wall of Fame.  Knowing Sam, it probably won't surprise any of you that he had no problem finishing off the Big Ugly!  What I did find a bit disconcerting was that he finished it in 12 minutes flat, before, in fact, any of the rest of us had even finished our 1/4 pound hamburgers!!!  What's even scarier than that is that we found out that if you eat TWO Big Uglies (yep, that's 2 lbs. of meat and 1 lb. of buns) you get an 8x10 picture of yourself on the wall.  There are only about 10 people who have accomplished this feat!  And...legend has it that if someone were to eat THREE Big Uglies (a feat that has yet to be mastered) the owner will get a DOOR SIZED blown up picture of the person who slays that Ugly Dragon!  Needless to say, Sam now has a new goal in life!

This is...THE BIG UGLY in all its glory!

Making preparations!

The first UGLY bite!

Sam (far left) compares the last bite of his hamburger to the rest of ours!  As you can see, the rest of us still have a ways to go!

Last bite!  12 minutes flat!  Our waitress' eyes bugged out when she saw that he was done so soon!  Her words, "Wow! I've never seen anyone eat one so fast before!"

Sam was so proud he was practically giddy!  Here his is posing with his autographed picture before it finds its place on the Big Ugly Wall of Fame!

My Bubby...I've never been less proud.

Last Monday, Sam and I took a little day trip to Cincinnati.  We had a good time and saw some interesting things.  Our first stop was the Creation Museum.  I must say, a bit pricey to get in...20 bucks a person!!!  The bloody Louvre Museum in Paris is not that much!  The museum was very nicely built, with a lot of use of technology and animatronics.  There were a lot of kids there and they seemed to really enjoy it.  Sam and I thought it was just "okay."  The information the exhibits provided was interesting, but not as "scientific" as we thought it could have been.  We think there's a lot of really convincing and scientific information for intelligent design, but the museum didn't really hit on any of that.  It mostly just outlined the literal six day creation story of Genesis, with not a whole lot of science to back it up, we thought.  Anyway, it was interesting to visit.

Sam & Em in front of the museum

A chameleon on display - its tongue can shoot out 1/2 of its body length to catch insects!

Adam feeding the animals in the Garden of Eden.

Adam & Eve naked as picked birds in the Garden!

The museum offered some interesting info on dinosaurs too!

This was soooo interesting!  This was an exhibit on skin color and how people have developed different skin tones since Creation.  The two babies below are fraternal twins! I don't know how well you can tell from the photo, but the twin on the left is dark complected, with dark eyes and hair like their parents, but the twin on the right has very fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes!

The Krohn Conservatory!

Our next stop was the Krohn Conservatory in a really pretty, old neighborhood (East Walnut Hills) in Cincinnati.  It's a small conservatory, but it's free (yea!) and they have a really nice (albeit small) orchid selection.  Here are a few of my orchid shots.

Our last stop was a huge grocery store we found that specializes in very...um...shall we say...unique items.  First of all they have a huge variety of just about everything you could ever possibly want, need, or even think of!  I have never seen so many different cheeses, olives, and wines anywhere!  They also have aisle and aisles of ethnic foods.  And not the "ethnic" foods you find at Marsh, like "Asian" and "Hispanic."  We're talking South African, Ethiopian, Indian, Swedish, Greek, Australian, New Zealand, Chilean...just to name a few!  The absolute most "interesting" section though had to be the meats.  They specialize in rare meats like shark, antelope, kangaroo and the more unique cuts of regular meats like pork, beef and lamb.  Imagine my surprise when I looked down into the meat cooler and saw an entire decapitated pig's head, snout, ears, bug eyes and all staring back at me!  I think worse than that though was the sheep's head next to it with its eyes bulging out of its head and its tongue hanging out the side of its mouth which is twisted up in the death throes!  They also sold packets of chicken feet, cow tongue, pig tongue, cow stomach, pig brains, pig feet, duck heads, and my personal favorite - "lamb fries."  What are lamb fries you ask? Well, I wasn't sure at first until I took a closer look.  They're what my grandmas call Rocky Mountain Oysters.  Yep, sheep testicles!  Yum!!!

Here are the store's bathrooms.  The facade looks like you're going into a port-a-potty, but then you enter into an actual bathroom.  The middle "bathroom" you see below is allegedly an exact replica of Henry VIII's toilet!

Check out some of the interesting meats below...especially the lamb fries!

This is what you call a Fon-don't!

In what is sure to go down as the Unfortunate Fondue Incident of 2008, Dan, Margie, Zac, Sam, and I decided to have a fabulous fondue feast last Friday!  We started with a beer cheese fondue (how can you go wrong with beer cheese?) and followed that with a wonderful assortment of chicken, shrimp, beef, and vegetables.  We finished up with a chocolate fondue with strawberries and pound cake!  Very, very yummy! Things turned a little, shall we say, interesting when Sam had to refill the fuel container under the fondue pot.  As Sam was pouring the fuel into the container, there was quite a bit of spillover onto the plate he was holding the fuel container over.  So, the container is refilled, the fondue pot was going again, all seems well, right?  But alas, we now have a plate that is filled with fondue fuel!  What to do??? Let's see...one could have poured it into the trash, used a paper towel to sop it up...any number of things to safely dispose of it really.  But no, Sam decides that it would be "cool" to set it on fire and "see what happens."  Hmmmm!  So he takes the lighter to the plate and thus begins a downward spiraling of events that has thusly become know as the Unfortunate Fondue Incident of '08!          

                                             

As soon as the fire hit the fuel laden plate, a whoosh of blue flames overtook the plate instantly. I liken it to ordering Saganaki (the Greek flaming cheese you order that they set on fire at your tableside!  Opa!)  Still though, at this point I wasn't overly concerned for our safety since the fire was being contained in the plate.  My only concern at this point was for the stupidity of my husband (who they apparently allow to build hospitals) and the safety of our future unborn children in regards to said stupidity.  Then, Dan decides it would be "fun" to wave his hand through the blue flames!  But oh wait, the flaming plate is getting rather hot you say?  Imagine that!  So Sam decides to use a paper towel to pick up the plate to keep from getting burned!  As Sam reaches for the plate with the paper towel, it promptly bursts into flames as well.  So now Sam is holding a flaming paper towel and in a panic decides to throw the flaming paper towel across the kitchen in the "general direction" of the sink.  And as Sam puts it..."Well, it almost made it!"  But not quite, it instead landed near the sink on a dish towel laying on the counter. At this point everyone starts to panic and we all jump up from the table, and Dan runs over and picks up the still flaming paper towel and finally throws it into the sink.  At this point the flaming plate is beginning to die down too.  And we can focus our attention on Zac who is crying and absolutely terrified!  Poor little guy!  And in a twist of ironic fate, Zac had just had fire safety in his pre-school class last Wednesday!  At least he knew to Stop, Drop, and Roll!

Awwww....How Sweet!  It's Guy Love Between Two Guys!