Denise and I certainly know what we’re thankful for…
Tag Archive for 'denise'
Denise and I would like to officially welcome Calvin Jacob Schmidt to the world. He was born Saturday, November 21, at 3:58pm. He was 8lbs 10oz and 21″ in length.
Well you had to think that any offspring of Denise and I would be a little on the stubborn side… the little bugger is 5 days late today. So just to update everyone, Denise is tentatively scheduled to be induced this Friday.
Denise hit 37 weeks today so according to the OB this morning, she’s now officially considered full term…
Denise and I took a weekend road trip to Wisconsin Dells with our friend, Gredd. No occasion really, other than it being most likely our last little vacation before the baby arrives, which is also why we had to drive. But despite Denise being pregnant, we did manage to play no less than 271 holes of mini golf!
And while we’re on the topic of statistics, although it started off as a kind of sad commentary on modern life, it’s actually becoming a road trip tradition in our family to count Walmart trucks. One which began on our honeymoon. The funny thing is we only saw 51 on our entire 4,365-mile honeymoon road trip. Last weekend, we saw 55 on our little 574-mile road trip… and 35 of those were on the way there!
Pictures after the break.
We’re back from a very relaxing vacation… 10 days, 3077.3 miles of driving and 5 states. Highlights include seeing Colonel Mustard at a rest stop and Denise almost getting blown off a mountain.
Pictures are here.
Our approximate route is here.
Denise is feeling pretty sore today but in general she’s doing remarkably well. Anyone who would’ve been with us earlier and saw the Explorer at the towing place today would have to agree! Here are some pics of the aftermath.
I had a very long, very stressful night last night. Denise got in a rather nasty accident with the Explorer last night. She appears to be fine, except for some bumps and bruises. Thank God for that!
Unfortunately, the Explorer wasn’t so lucky. Oh well, it had always been a beater anyway and now its been officially put out of its misery. And it gave its life for a good cause.
Apparently discontent with the already high number of changes in our lives recently, Denise and I took the plunge and decided to get a puppy that we both fell in love with yesterday. She’s a 10-week-old American Eskimo/Papillon mix named (Captain) Morgan.
Oh, but that’s just the start of the adventure! After only owning her for a mere 2 or 3 hours, Denise came back downstairs with her after showing her to her parents. As she was bending over to put Morgan down, she suddenly kicked away and fell awkwardly onto the berber carpet downstairs. She immediately started to yelp loudly and her front paw seemed to dangle oddly.
So… off to the vet we went. We learned that she had a clean break of the two bones in her lower limb and she’ll need to have surgery tomorrow. As you can probably imagine, that won’t be cheap!
It’s now 11:30pm and we’re home… puppy-less. She’s staying overnight at the vet and probably tomorrow as well. Denise is obviously a little broken up over the whole matter and she feels a little guilty for “breaking our puppy”. But hopefully in a week or so, she’ll be good as new. Both of them. 
We spent the day and afternoon hanging around Atlantic City. Among the highlights, Denise getting attacked by seagulls! Turns out the seagulls on the Boardwalk are fairly aggressive, to say the least. This is mostly because the little old ladies (which AC is FULL of!) insist on feeding them, despite the signs posted everywhere that explicitly instruct you not to!
Anyway, I unfortunately missed this whole episode but here’s how it was described to me. She was bringing her slice of pizza down the Boardwalk to meet up with me for lunch when she felt a tapping on her shoulder. She thought it was either somebody or something bumping into her shoulder but she turned only to find a very gutsy seagull sitting on her shoulder! Before she could react he had made a grab for, and got, a pepperoni off her slice. When she got to where I was, she was almost in tears. Don’t worry, she and I can laugh about it now. Well, I do anyway…
When we’d had enough of AC, we took a long leisurely drive (partly to avoid tolls) up to Philadelphia and across half of Pennsylvania to Gettysburg.
Today was mainly spent driving so we could get to Florida easily tomorrow. That being said, we drove through some gorgeous terrain in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Other than that, it was all about Denise. We woke up to a free continental breakfast in the hotel, a favorite vacation activity for her. For lunch, we stopped for a quick bite at a Sonic drive-in, a place which I’ve been promising to take her for a year and a half now but it’s fairly difficult to follow through on since there aren’t any in Minnesota… for now. For dinner, she’d always wanted to try Cici’s Pizza, which we see commercials for but have never actually seen back home. They seem to be way more common in the southeastern US. Although now that I look at their site, their appears to be one a mere 15 miles from where we live. Go figure.
While passing through Atlanta, we tried to check out the Georgia Aquarium but unfortunately they were closed. We stopped for the night in Valdosta, GA.
While walking around San Francisco: “I’m telling you, these streets were laid out by Dr. Seuss.”
Denise and I spent a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at Valleyfair today. The weather says it only got up to 83 degrees but it felt warmer walking around in the sun. So it felt pretty good to ride on a couple water rides (see the pic of Denise after getting drenched on the Flume on the right).
I thought the new Renegade coaster was really fun but Denise 
thought it was a little too–as she put it–”rickety”. In my opinion, that’s pretty much what can be expected from a wooden roller coaster.
I’m not typically one to fall prey to carny games, but the ginormous stuffed Stewie doll just called to me and I felt compelled to win it… for Denise, of course. On the 5th try, I was victorious (see left).
Like really old-fashioned. Like right out of the 70s. First up was a trip to the Taste of Minnesota where we dined on corn-on-the-cob, a corn dog for Denise and a foot-long hot dog for me. Oh yeah, and we rocked out to the Village People (see über-lame cell phone video number one or number two).
We decided we didn’t want to wait around for the couple hours after the Village People (mercifully) ended until the fireworks started so we headed out. Continuing 70s night, we stopped by the A&W drive-in. I, of co
urse, had a root beer freeze. But for some unknown reason (I think she was dropped on her head as a child), Denise doesn’t like root beer.
Not quite wanting to go home yet, we played a little late-night bingo. Despite coming close a few times, we won exactly $0.
Oh, and I almost forgot, after A&W we stopped to get the car washed. Check out video below of Denise being entertained by it. She’s so easily amused!
The fun continues tomorrow when we head to Valleyfair!
