Philly Trip 2 - Amish Country, Hikes and Double Dates

Monday morning, we all got up early to head to the Shady Maple Buffet in Amish country.  It was a whole slew of browns.
There was mom and dad (I had 2 pics and couldn't decide which was cuter, so I'm posting them both:

Rich and I were there (of course!)

Joel and his girlfriend Kate:

and Grandma and Grandpa:

Rich got his first taste of scrapple!!  He liked it (although he probably didn't fully understand what it was):

Joel got a hold of my phone and took a bunch of dumb pictures.  Here are 2 of the dumbest:

After breakfast, Mom and Grandpa headed home, while Grandma, Joel, Rich and I hit up the Shady Maple gift store.  Stick candy was on sale so dad bought us all one (with the exception of Grandma, who had wandered off somewhere):

Who got candy? These guys:

Next we tried on some Amish attire.  The boys wore straw hats:

While us girls wore bonnets.  Kate was not great at "serious face":

We then drove to Maplehofe Dairy for ice cream and Amish grocery shopping:

Joel photobomed our next photo (on purpose!!):

Then it was Joel and Kate's turn for pics, so he hoisted her up on his shoulders:

While we were eating our  ice cream outside, I dared Joel to do a handstand...then this happened:

Since he had already ripped his pants, I said he should try again:

So much awesomesauce!!

When we got home, Rich and I decided to walk off some of the food we ate, by hiking the Leiper-Smedly trail.  We found a big, open, overgrown amphitheater.  Rich went down to investigate, while I stayed safely above to take pictures:

Monday evening, Joel, Kate, Rich and I all got dressed up and went out to the Cheesecake factory for dinner.  It was at the King of Prussia Mall, so we walked around the mall a bit before dinner.\

Looking back, I can't believe how much we did in 1 day...and this wasn't even our busiest day!!

Philly Trip 1 - Reptiland

I convinced Rich to take a week off to go to Philly with me!  It was a blast!  There will be multiple blogs covering our trip.  This blog covers the first day of our trip.  Rich drove his fancy 2013 Ford Taurus (it was sooo pretty and even more comfortable!

A little over half way thru our trip we stopped at Reptiland!!  Every time I would drive to/from Philly, I would think "oh, Reptiland, I should stop!" but I never did because I was so focused on getting to/from Philly.

It was just off of Route 80, and easy to find with the large sign out front:

We got our hand stamped when we went inside (it said Reptiland):

I wrastled an alligator:

Rich didn't have as much fun on the alligator:

JUST KIDDING!

Ride 'em cowboy!!  YEEEEHAWW

After mastering faux alligators we went and saw the real thing (it was behind us, but you can't really see it):

The BEST part was the dinosaur exhibit.  There were animitronic dinosaurs that moved and roared and were a bit terrifying...especially the T-Rex:

We tried taking a picture of ourselves together in front of the T-Rex:

Thank goodness a sweet lady came a long and offered to take the pic for us!!

Rich got to pet some baby dinosaurs

AND feed some Emu's!

After feeding one, he was feeling pretty confident...confident enough to feed 3!!

After that harrowing adventure, Rich used the "I faced my fear, time for you to face yours" line on me, so we went into the butterfly habitat (what emu's and butterflies have to do with Reptiles, I don't know).  Here's what it looked like inside:

And here's how I felt about being in there:

After Reptiland, we had an uneventful second leg of our trip and made it safe and sound to Philly.  More to follow!

A pain in the....back

This weekend was a total bust.  Thursday after work I decided to try working out again.  I was on the reclining bike for all of 30 seconds before my back went out.  My back had been tweaking for a bit, meaning I would have random twinges of pain, but after "exercising" it went out.  I'm impressed I actually was able to drive myself home.

I had to call off of work Friday and Saturday, and cancel all of my weekend plans with my girlfriends.  It was literally the worst.  I spent 3 days on the couch or bed, trying to find a comfortable position.  I am SO sick of TV/internet after 3 days of that.

Monday I had a dentist appointment.  Luckily my back was good enough to sit/recline in a dentist chair.  While I was there they were poking my old fillings to make sure they were ok and the dentist poked a freakin hole right thru my filling...and then, to add insult to injury, she couldn't get the poky tool back out of the filling.  After a minute of wiggling and struggling she finally pried the poky tool out of my tooth.

They said I would need the filling removed and a new one put in.  2 hours and 80 dollars later, my filling had been replaced.  Thank GOODNESS for Novocaine   They way they were pounding and drilling on my tooth, I'm sure it would have hurt like a rabid monkey if not for the Novocaine!

Tuesday, inspired by my 3-4 hours in dentist chair with minimal back pain, I thought I'd go get my hair done.  I went to Raphael's beauty school (because schools are a LOT cheaper than regular beauty salons).  I got my hair highlighted and "trimmed"  I asked the girl to just take a little off...to even up the layers.  2 inches later, my hair is as short as it was a year ago.  :(

Here is the before:

During:

After:

Buh-Bye long hair.  Hello medium length hair.  The highlights were also WAY blonder than I wanted.  I really wanted just a lighter shade of brown, but I got platinum blond highlights.  Sigh.  I guess you get what you pay for.

Hopefully my back is all better by Sunday because that's when Rich and I leave for Philly for a week!

Beautiful Sunday

Cleveland finally experienced a beautiful spring day on Sunday!  I got up early and went over Rich's to make breakfast.  I made a basic scramble with sausage, bacon, cheese and for Rich, mushrooms.  I asked Rich to take a picture and the first one turned out pretty good:

Then he tried to take a self portrait with the food and I got these master pieces (so cute, right?):

And finally a pic of Rich and food!

After all of that yummy food we went out to teach Rich to drive a stick.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture.  It was fun and Rich was doing really good.  We only made it through one lap (maybe 20 min) before he got frustrated and we decided to take a break.  I think in the future, I'll use this sign:

After that we both had some nervous energy to burn off so we went to the North Chagrin Reservation to walk around.  We found the whispering woods (and promptly started whispering)

Thank goodness Rich had his phone on him to take this picture (and the one above):

Believe it or not it was super crowded on the trail so, being the introverts we are, we went home and watched some Adam 12, a police show Rich loves, and is kinda interesting to me.  In all fairness, I made him watch Doctor Who, so I don't mind watching a few police shows:

The rest of the weekend was spent running errands (groceries, laundry, cleaning, catching up on sleep, etc).  Next weekend I'm (hopefully) hanging out with Mitch and Dom (and maybe KW?), then having a girls brunch with Leeann!  Rich got next weekend off because the weekend (and week) after that will be spent in PA visiting my family!  YAY!  Soon!!

Happy Easter!!

This week was again, fairly uneventful.  I was invited to Rich's to celebrate the holiday with him and his family.  I didn't want to intrude in their family gatherings 2 weeks in a row, so I politely declined and hung out with Mitch and Dom.

Mitch and Dom are so low key, so we just went to the 5 star buffet (a new Chinese buffet that opened less than a block from Mitch and Dom's house!!!)  Before we went to the buffet I dropped by to see their new hardwood floor dining room.  It is the fanciest!!

After that we went to 5 Star buffet.  It was pretty amazing, although everything Chinese buffet is amazing!!  Dom refused to take pics but I got pics of Mitch and I :

After dinner I tried to convince Mitch and Dom to go see the Host with me.  Sadly I mentioned "Stephanie Meyer" and they both promptly said no.  LOL my bad.  The movie was ok, but it lacked the emotion of the book.  There also wasn't a whole lot of the younger brother, when he was a HUGE part of the book.  It's a solid 5/10 stars, and maybe those who hadn't read the book would like it more.  I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it though.

Monday Rich took off of work and we talked and cuddled and watched movies.  The most eventful part of the day was going to T.G.I. Friday's.  Lol So nothing special happened other than getting to spend time with one of the greatest guys around.

That's about it.  Nothing big planned for the next 2 weeks, but on the 21st, Rich and I are planning to go visit my parents in philly!!!  YAY!