Just Us: Busy Visit

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Busy Visit

What a great time we had in Cleveland!!! We finally caught a break with taxes and won't have to pay an arm and a leg this year. Yippee!

We went to a nice Italian dinner with Donna and Bob and got to see Rose, Joe, Chris, Shannon and Emma. Emma is getting so big.

There were two highlights of the visit for me--seeing Jenna, Jon and the kids and taking Tony's Amelia Earhart painting to the Women's Aviation Museum.

The Women's Museum really needs some major publicity. It's a great place to show young girls that literally, "the sky is the limit." There are several exhibits showing women in aviation--the space program, pilots, even building an airplane from scratch. There is an exhibit for Katherine Wright, the Wright Brothers sister, who was their aviation spokesperson. That was cool. The Museum is very informal at this point, translation--they need their own building, as things are just everywhere.

Tony's painting will be part of the Amelia Earhart exhibit and is on loan to the museum indefinitely. They were thrilled to get it and I was so proud of Tony and his artistic talent. Check out the photos below.

And then we got to see the kids! Wow, talk about growing. Ben is chest high to me and even looks older. He is not paying attention when I tell him not to grow! Zach is walking and doing very well. He was kind of luke warm to us and that hurts, since he doesn't see us that often, but I am determined that he will know us.

Sammy is a hoot and Ellie was a doll. She is speaking so much better. As always, they had a great time being with Papa while I took pictures--by the way, I only took 439 pictures this trip, so while I thank all of you who allowed me to flash in your face, I think I'm doing a pretty good job of "cutting back!!!!" OK, maybe I need to keep working on it.

One of the highlights of the visit was when Ben and Sam showed Papa their magnifying glasses. They got behind Papa and ran the glasses over his head....all of a sudden, Ben said, "Papa!!! You have a big red spot on the back of your head!!!!" Tony laughed out loud and told Ben that was called a "bald spot."

We did this visit a bit differently than our others. Rather than just play and run around with the kids, Papa sat down and read them a story before they went to bed. That was nice.

We are going back to Cleveland next month for Emma's baptism, so hopefully we will get to see the kids again and Zach will recognize us more. I hope so.

We picked up Dixie on Monday evening--she was a bit under the weather, so we are questioning having her boarded with the breeder. We love the breeder, but there are so many things Dixie could pick up with some many dogs around.

So, here is our visit in pictures.