Blog

Happy Monday after Thanksgiving (blaaaahhh)! Now that our bellies are all a little pudgier and we’re all a little sleepier and we all probably have a daunting amount of crap to catch up on at work and at home (I know I do! The laundry pile has its own zip code), I thought I’d start off the week with a lengthy nice recap of the past few days.

We thoroughly enjoyed a fantastic 4-day holiday weekend in Cincy with my parents – our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, our first Thanksgiving that I’ve hosted & helped cooked, our first Thanksgiving in Cincy, and our first Thanksgiving in our house. That’s a lot of firsts! I should also throw in there that this was Ted’s first real day(s) off since he began his job November 1. Needless to say, we’ve been looking forward to the Thanksgiving holidays and my parent’s visit!

My parents arrived with a 10 ft. u-haul and my Buick in tow on Wednesday afternoon…in the rain. We have a long, narrow driveway and a car in tow on the car dolly attached to the back of a truck cannot be put into reverse (Who likes a challenge?). Dad maneuvered it down the driveway, parked it in front of the house and we unloaded all my boxes into the basement. Luckily I did a massive “I don’t need all this junk” cleaning before I moved and got rid of about half or more of what I owned (and wow does that feel amazing!), so there’s only a reasonable sized pile of boxes – most of which are kitchen things and clothes. Did I mention we unloaded in the biting cold, windy, rain? Oh, well, we did. Ted came home from work a few hours early and he and my dad unhooked my car from the tow dolly while mom and I brought some cooking stuff up to the kitchen. That night we went to dinner at Montgomery Inn – Boathouse. It’s a fantastic hot-spot restaurant right on the river that is the border between downtown Cincy and Kentucky. While dining you have a awesome view of the river, the bridges that connect Ohio and Kentucky, and the downtown Cincy and Covington areas. The food is excellent. They’re known for their ribs and they are fall-off-the-bone tasty. The place is huge for a fancy restaurant but always mobbed. That night because of the crowd it was mandatory vallet parking (which in the cold icy rain was quite alright) and we had to make reservations for priority seating so the wait isn’t as long as the normal seating wait. I had a creamy portobello mushroom and red pepper bisque, ribs, and the most delicious mac n’ cheese I’ve ever feasted on. Everyone else had ribs too along with a glass of their signature house beer – Ted’s Pail Ale. It is definitely a restaurant you take your guests to as an introduction to the city. So, come visit us! :-)

Thursday was Thanksgiving. We went to church to celebrate Thanksgiving mass in the morning (one of my most favorite traditions). Mom and I cooked all day and the guys watched Football. It was cold, gloomy and rainy again all day – perfect staying inside weather. The food was great and the company was even better. We sure do have a lot to be Thankful for – this year and every year. After dinner we watched Garfield’s Thanksgiving. The classic cartoons are hilarious. Please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of it if you don’t already have it recorded off the TV onto a VHS tape from the 80’s. The humor and sarcasm won’t let you down.

That night around midnight as Ted & I stayed up late to cash in on a starting-at-midnight-Black-Friday deal on a warranty plan for our new washer & dryer set (ha! you know you’re no longer 21 when your idea of a Black Friday sale is a warranty, not clothing) we happened to look out the window to see this….

As a disclaimer, I’ve never gone Black Friday shopping. There’s pretty much no reason good enough for me to crawl out of my warm, cozy bed at 1:30 a.m. to stand in line with 200 other grumpy people at 3 a.m. in 30 degree weather and risk being trampled to death in a stampede. Nope. Not for me. That being said, we decided it might be fun to see what all the hubub is about. We all slept in, ate a leisurely breakfast at home, and left home around 11:30 to return the u-haul. We drove around some of the big shopping spots in Cincy making stops at Target, Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Christopher & Banks (for my mom – she likes that all her kids live in a city with a C&B nearby since they don’t have any in San Antonio). I was expecting full parking lots, boisterous crowds, snaking lines, and super hot deals. Sooo…what’s the big deal about Black Friday again? We effortlessly found parking spots, walked right up to the cash register at Target with our purchases, and I didn’t see any major sales that knocked my socks off. Maybe all the big sales are timed ones in the wee hours of the morning and maybe that’s when all the crazies are out. But by the time we made it to these stores in the early afternoon – it was no big deal. Just a normal shopping trip. We received gift cards to Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond and Target as wedding presents so we stocked up on Wii games & accessories for our new Wii console, shop work lights for Ted, and a several kitchen accessories including a knife block, knife set, knife sharpener, and electric turkey carving knife for next year (um, regular dull knives don’t cut it on a turkey folks….lesson learned) – all stuff we’ve been wanting to get and all for free. Excellent. And Thank You Everyone! We lunched at Five Guys – a great burger joint if you’ve never been to one (go!) – and then took mom & dad on a scenic driving tour of Eden Park, Mirror Lake, the museum district, Mt. Adams (Cincy’s upscale bohemian Greenwich Village), and the bustling downtown area of Cincinnati including Fountain Square. For dinner we met our friends Nick & Linda at a yummy (but spicy! Hope you like your food hot!) restaurant between Anderson & Williamsburg called Great Scott. They graciously allowed us to stay with them while we were house hunting – they’re great people and it was very nice to see them again.

Saturday we took mom & dad to UC to show them where Ted works at CCM. Ted gave an awesome 2-hour tour! We saw all 6 performing spaces including recital halls, costume/prop/set/lighting storage, the massive scene shop (anyone in theatre would be highly jealous of this shop), Ted’s office area, the hydraulic lift on the orchestra pit, the trap door room under the stage (for the 20 some odd traps), the music rehearsal room that overlooks the Bearcats football field, some of the 164 Steinway baby grand and grand pianos in the building, and the electrics shop where some of the moving light are being fixed (aaaand I may have gotten to play with the color, gobo patterns, focus and positioning of said light with the light board :-) ). They have some pretty fabulous stuff! After that tour we ventured over to West Chester to the Ikea to clue my parents in on the self-contained world that is Ikea. If you haven’t been to one, it’s worth the drive to just spend a few hours walking through it and, of course, the Swedish food at the restaurant is tasty as well. Don’t miss the Swedish Meatballs, Lingionberries or the Chocolate Overload cake (though it is recommended that you share it among 4 people…bring friends!). After Ikea we went to check out a place called Jungle Jim’s that we’ve been hearing about from people all over town. Jungle Jim’s is an international food market. They have a hugely extensive wine and beer section, meats and cheeses from all over the world, cooking classes, old vintage-type candy, fresh produce and herbs, and more. Oh and they have a monorail (monorail!) outside that circles the whole building and a lot of jungle animal statues and decor. Their restrooms are award-winning (they look like you are entering a porta-potty on the outside) and they have a nearly 800 lb. cheese. We picked up some butterkase cheese from Germany, some cigarette candy sticks (good luck finding those anymore!), and some different flavors of Woodchuck Hard Cider to try. We ate at Skyline Chili (a Cincy chili chain that makes a Greek recipe chili with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg in it – a very unique flavoring that’s worth a try if you’re in the Cincinnati area), and then built a fire in our backyard firepit to have s’mores and coffee/cider around.

Sunday was our chill day. We went to Mass and checked out electric fireplaces at Lowe’s & Home Depot that blow heat for our kitchen (our kitchen is missing a minor something called insulation and is easily 7 degrees colder than the rest of the house which is costs a fortune to heat and keeps it in the 50’s or low 60’s in there). We ate Thanksgiving leftovers and made turkey veggie noodle soup from the bones of the turkey. Ted watched the Packers game (not a pretty outcome) and then we went for a small hike through the woods at the nearby Stanbery Park in Mt. Washington. I love discovering new parks – there’s no shortage of pretty parks in Cincinnati and most have little rivers, great hiking trails, swing sets, and grills. There’s still plenty more I’d like to visit before it gets too snowy or cold. At the worst I’ll have to wait until spring. We can check out a new one every weekend. We came home and watched a few episodes of a funny Irish TV show called Ballykissangel (recommended for a good laugh – kind of like Northern Exposure) and broke open the Wii for a few rounds of archery! It’s hard to believe that the Wii has been out for like 5 years already! Such amazing technology – we love having it!

Mom & dad left this morning and the house is awfully quiet with Ted at work. So now it’s back to the real world – a world of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking dinners, unloading boxes in the basement, getting my Ohio drivers license, and oh yeah, that little thing called finding a job. Up next is finding our Christmas tree, Christmas shopping, holiday cards, hopefully receiving our pro pics from the wedding very very soon so we can get our Thank You cards out, and tying up loose ends from moving and getting married. And, oh yeah, still finding a job. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post:  A picture tour of our house! Hope you all survive easing back into real life after your holiday weekend.