Home Sweet Home

Well we are back from our trip to Ohio and have a lot to report so this may be a long post! The whole trip started out a bit shaky thanks to the helpful people who work at United (not!). We got to the ticket counter and our tickets wouldn't show up when we swiped our card like it should have. Since everything to do with checking in is automated now there were about 4 agents just staring at us while we tried to lure them over to our station to help. After throwing Annie at them one finally came over to see what they could do. So with that finally figured out, we got Tim a pass to walk us back to the airplane. That took about 2 hours because Annie was still limping from her collision with the ticketing agents so we were the last to get to the plane. Believe it or not, it is United's policy to seat families in the very last row of the airplane. Tim kissed us all goodbye and handed me Annie's 20 pound seat. I had Olive strapped to me in my sling, and had the carseat in one hand and Annie (who didn't want to go in the correct direction) in my other hand. We walked down the jetway to the smallest "bridge" from the jetway to the plane. Of course Annie didn't want to cross it and of course the stewardess standing in the plane didn't want to help me either. So anyways, to make a long story short, there was a lot of crying for the first 20 minutes of the flight from all Nuetzel's involved...and I'd also like to add they didn't offer the last row of the plane any refreshments either! Jerks.

Onto Ohio! We landed in Dayton around 12 am and headed to the hotel I booked thinking that we would get more sleep staying in town rather than driving to Lima (not!). Annie was so excited to see Nana and visa versa that we didn't get to sleep until 2 am. And then Nana says this isn't the case, but Nana woke Annie up at 8 am while I was in the bathroom, so we only got like 6 hours of sleep. But on the other hand we got the hotel room for $20 less than I booked it for and I'm not positive but I think someone in Greeley got the bill for it. At least that is what the receipt said!

Onto Lima! Well the whole week was a blur, but we did arrive to find out that there were reports of a panther on the loose within a few blocks of where Nana and Papa live. People had reported seeing it chasing a deer across a field, killing barn cats, creating havoc and being a sourse of jokes at the Rondot house. Later in the week it was found out that the panther was really just an oversized breed of cat that was once used to kill rats on ships. Makes you wonder how this cat ended up living in the woods of BFE.

Anyways, what did we do? We went to visit my Grandpa Miller...

We went to a carnival were you could win a cake for 10 cents, or win a crappy prize for $2.00, or decided you want to ride a pony only to change your mind and then get talked into riding a pony but not like it one bit. Speaking of bits, or should I say bites, Annie decided that her cousin Kyle tasted tasty so she took a bite out of his back one night...she's really sorry for that! Anyways, here is the whole gang (Annie and her cousins) with the $10 worth of prizes from the go fish game. Kyle is the taste cutie with the baseball bat which he should have used to defend himself against Annie and her teeth.

What else did we do? We swam a lot in Nana and Papa's pond, fed their baby ducks, set them free and then decided we wanted them back in their pen, almost got blown away during a storm that caused several tornadoes around the county, played in the golf course sprinklers, rode the Papa ride (the golf cart) and the other Papa ride (the tractor).

The main reason we were back in Ohio was to have Olivia baptised, here are a few pics of the ceremony as well as some of her in her gown which I designed and did the embroidery on, Nana sewed it all together just in the nick of time.

The whole time we were in Ohio I kept thinking how nice it was to be back home and especially so this time because Annie's cousins Luke and Kyle stayed at Nana's house, and John is living in Lima again so we saw everyone a lot more than we normally do, and believe it or not while we were leaving for the airport on our last day I was seriously thinking that it wouldn't be all that bad to live in Lima...crazy! I guess we will have to wait and see which Home Sweet Home, Denver or Ohio wins out in the end. ps, check out our photo album, I'll be putting more photos of our trip in there soon.