What came first, Chicken or 600 plastic eggs?

Here comes Peter Cottontail,

swimming down the bunny trail. 

Splish-ity, splash-ity, Easter's on it's way!

Yes, the Easter Bunny visited us despite the recent downpours which have turned every yard into a swimming pool and every swimming pool into an outdoor bathtub.

But we Hoosiers won't let a few April showers stop us from searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs.  We may be sweet, but we definitely won't melt! 

Bo: I might melt.
Chicken: No, you won't.
Bo: Okay, but theoretically given the right circumstances
        I could be swept away in the flood waters.
Chicken: Well, that's plausible.  Jump in and we'll test that theory.

Okay, well maybe it was a bit more than a few April showers.

But that's why we all take swimming lessons as children, right?
So we didn't let these spring showers dampen our Easter spirit and went along with our festivities as usual.

The Dog Egg Hunt:
There are no grand babies, but there are grand doggies; so we had our first ever dog Easter egg hunt!  Bo took the smallest eggs she could find and put a dog treat in each one.  Then she put the treat filled eggs in a bag with some dog kibbles and let them baste in the scent for awhile. 

It was rather comical to watch the dogs (and their owners) dart about and egg hunt.  Bo's dog found the first egg, Ashes's dog found 4 eggs, and the oldest dog in the egg hunt -Pete- found four too. 

The puppy of the group, Miss Annabelle, didn't quite understand the concept of the egg hunt; but we have no doubt that she will lead the pack next year.

All-in-all, our 1st annual dog egg hunt was a tail-wagging success!

 The Tween & Teen Egg Hunt:

Going into this hunt, our two cousins had two very different strategies for finding the most eggs. 

Lady Bug, being the youngest of the two, went into the hunt with the

All-Hyped-On-Mountain Dew-and-All-I've-Had-To-Eat-Today-Is-Chocolate strategy. 

While Butterfly, the elder of the two with more Easter egg hunting experience,
went into the hunt knowing that slow and steady wins the race! and
taking the road less traveled by  will lead to more egg finding possibilities.

At the end of the hunt, the eggs were tallied and . . . it was a tie!

Apparently it doesn't matter how hyped-up on sugar you are or what road you take.

Ashes: The moral of the story is NEVER try.

The Grown-Up Kids Egg Hunt:
Okay, let us start out by saying that our grandma, Nonie, is very serious about our yearly egg hunt.  So serious in fact, that she was digging small holes to hid some of the eggs and then covering the holes with leaves.  There were eggs in trees, under leaf piles, hidden in the woods, they were everywhere. 

Chicken was helping with the hiding of the eggs and Nonie kept picking her eggs up and hiding them in new places because she said, "we're going to make them work for their candy." 

There were 443 eggs hidden. . .

we searched high. . .

we search low. . .

over hill and dell. . .

We only found 412. 

Which means somewhere out there 31 eggs are still waiting to be found.

Our 2011 Easter was a time of great food, fun, and family.  We continued our old traditions and started some new ones, including a barefoot whiffleball game.  This year our Easter was soggy, muddy, and very hoppy!

WTF Toledo!?!

Ahh, Toledo, Ohio. 

The picturesque scenery.

The friendly townsfolk.

The delicious food.

The. . .

The. . .

The. . .OMG!  Is that an adult MOVIE theater!!!

Yes,

yes it is.

Now we're normally a pretty balanced pair, Chicken and I.

Chicken: I always see my glass half full of ice

               and completely full of Diet Coke.

Bo: And I always see my wine glass half-full of

       Silk's chocolate lite soy milk.

Chicken:  I like to smile.

Bo: I like to laugh.

Chicken: I like to laugh at Bo's laugh.

But there were many times when we both just looked at each other.  It took us quite a while before we could verbalize what it was we were thinking, because we just couldn't find the right words.  But we think we finally have them now: 

WTF Toledo!?!?

Everybody thinks of their hometown as the perfect place to be; so it's to be expected when you travel you'll invariably see something that makes you go "uhh?!?"  It was this "uhhh?!?" moment that has led us to write this, the first in a series of blog entries of traveling discoveries.

We had plenty of WTF Toledo moments
and some of them were so crazy
 it's resulted in us having to use the large-size font.

Now we're going to share these moments with you,
please join us in saying:

WTF Toledo!?!?

First let us start out by saying that we had a lot of problems with the road conditions.  Every street seemed to have some kind of construction work going on.  We would have taken a picture of the crazy maze of road cones that were out, but that would have required the use of our hands to pick up the camera and we were to busy clinging to our seat belts for dear life while Lishes navigated us safely through. 

When we passed all the traffic cone chaos, we started to really take in our scenery.

Then we saw the street lights. . .

Yeah, that's right. 

There are four lights on it. 

Believe it or not, this traffic light actually looks normal compared to the ones we saw with 5 (FIVE) lights on them. 

We have theories about what other colors there could possibly be on the traffic lights and what they meant.

We came up with these possibilities:

Red- Stop

Yellow- Slow Down

Green- Go

Blue- Do the Time Warp

 

or

Red- Stop

Orange- There is no turning back now! 

                Gun-it-and-run-it!

Yellow- Go Faster!  The lights going to turn red soon!

Green- Go at a moderate pace,

             take all the time you need to take in the scenery.

Lighter Green- It's a race

                         between you and the neighboring suburban. 

                         Burn some rubber! 

                         Go, Man, Go!

It ends up that what we considered extra lights were actually turn lights.  Go Figure! 

Chicken: Maybe they save room by having

               all the lights together on one unit?

Bo: I think our theories are MUCH more plausible.

We also saw several traffic lights that were set so close together that only one car could actually fit in the spot. 

What is outlined in red is the gap between the two traffic lights.  The green section is where we were pulling up to stop. 

If you think that's crazy, take a look at this intersection in action.

There are a lot of homes for rent and for sale in the Toledo area, so we took some time to check-out them out; like this beautiful one.

Moderately priced, completely remodeled inside, fresh paint, new appliances, three full bed rooms, lovely kitchen, with a modern interior.

Plenty of friendly neighbors:

I-Phone App: Sex Offender Registry

Less than 2 minutes from area shopping centers.

Oh, and did we mention plethora of friendly neighbors?

I-Phone App: Sex Offender Registry

Afterwards, we took in some more downtown scenery. 

Like, the building a dinosaur took a bite out of. 

And here we thought people weren't alive when dinosaurs were. . .here's your proof paleontologists!



We were also glad (and very confused) to share in the pride of this business' 1 star rating.

I don't know about you,
but if I only got 1 out of 3 stars I would not be plastering it outside of my business for the world to see. 

Let's look at this mathematically, shall we?

1 out of 3

1/3

.3333

33.3%

If we used a typical grading scale
(or any grading scale for that matter),
a 33.3% is an F.

So we're a bit confused as to why they are advertising that their business has failed.  Congratulations?

They weren't the only business that had confusing advertising.  We found this smoke stack on the top of a manufacturing plant.

This manufacturing plant that does NOT make cigarettes or cigars.  You can see our confusion.

We were also stunned to learn that Judgement Day is in May. 

This was news to us.  And to make sure we knew we were informed of said judgment day; we counted six bill boards advertising it, including a few in Spanish.

There was a LOT of graffiti, and it was everywhere.  Chicken even spotted some on a tree!  Artistically, we didn't understand most of it or had no appreciation for it.  Some of the graffiti wasn't that bad though. 

Here's Bo's favorite:

All to soon our day in Toledo was at an end.
As we hit the road, we thought we were leaving the craziness behind us.

Alas, no; because it wasn't soon before we encountered the following:

                          a gas station with a walk-in beer cooler

a blank road sign

(copy & paste this photo into paintbrush and create your own road sign)

two more blank road signs

                                a squirrel eating a hamburger

We could go on, and on, and on. . . 
but as we said in the beginning we're eternal optimists. 

This is just a tiny bit of Toledo.  When we first entered we were stunned at all of the little nature parks, hiking trails, and beautiful scenery.

 The sun glittering on the water in the mid morning cloudless sky was the perfect backdrop for our travels through the city.

Toledo also has a wonderful art museum, plenty of places for children to play and learn (including Imagination Station), and lots of great food.

Every city has it's little peccadilloes and own home town is no exception. 

Look for more WTF Cities!?!? to come out soon.

Blogging in the USA- TOLEDO, OH

Ohio,
17th State in the US
The Buckeye State.
State Flower: The Carnation
State Song: Beautiful Ohio
State Beverage: Tomato Juice

                                 Map courtesy of  EnchantedLearning.com
Toledo, Ohio
Home of the Toledo Rockets
the future home of  Lishes & Broham,
and our mini-get away destination.

We traveled to Ohio because our sister Lishes had a job interview there.  Lishes' husband, Broham, got accepted to the University of Toledo (YAY BROHAM!) and so the two of them will be moving to Ohio sometime this spring-summer (insert sad face here).

We had a long road ahead of us- three hours of road ahead to be exact, so caffeine was definitely in order.  We stopped by Mickey D's from some Moca Frappes and apple pies before starting our journey. 

The Moca Frappes started a long discussion on the "fluffiness" of the whipped cream and many other topics that included, but were not limited to:
stupid practice interview questions with Chicken (none of which were actually asked in the real interview)
funeral services for dogs (we got really specific and pretty ridiculous)  - this was a very long discussion
politics and current legislative bills
really gross animal stories
keeping in touch after Lishes moves to Ohio
memories of our Papaw
and how BoBo couldn't stay quiet for 5 minutes (she lasted less than two in the quiet game)

When we finally arrived in Toledo, Lishes drove us around downtown and showed us some of the sights. 

Then it was time for us to make ourselves scarce while Lishes had her interview; so we went to the Toledo Zoo. 

It was currently under some major renovations and it was hard to find where things were.  Since we went during the week and it was only 40 degrees outside (colder when the wind was blowing) we were two of about 20 people (including zoo keepers and security) who were in the zoo. 

We had the whole place to ourselves. 

By the way, walking through the zoo when it's quiet like that is very erie. 
Bo thinks the animals were more responsive and came right up to us because we were the only ones there.  Most of the time it was quiet, a little too quiet, except for the song that kept playing on the loud speakers called I love my zoo!

All the negatives behind, we actually had a pretty good time.  We saw some snow leopards up-close.  The female, Malenka, was very playful and kept chewing on her tail.  One of the zoo keepers stopped by to check on them while we were there and informed us it was breeding season.

Chicken visited some old friends and they had a nice chat.  BoBo doesn't speak parseltongue so she felt left out.
*(parseltongue is spelled correctly. . .we looked it up on the Harry Potter Wikipedia page)

BoBo: You're a wizard Chicken!

Chicken: A what?

BoBo: A wizard.

Chicken:  Really?  I always thought I was a Sagittarius.



After we checked out the Reptila House, we visited the POLAR BEARS!   Chicken loves polar bears, but she didn't love the fact that for the first time since we had been in the zoo there were 2 other small groups of people in there with us.  Arrg!

There was a baby polar bear, who was simply adorable!  He kept playing with a pine cone that he'd found.

Due to the insane crowds of five people, Chicken found herself trapped in the Arctic,
but since she is a true nature survivalist she made it through. 

Here are Chicken's Tips for Surviving the Arctic:

0. DO NOT go to the Arctic.
1. Caribou and polar bear skin can provide great warmth. 
    (You can attract a polar bear by flopping around in the snow -like a seal-
    and making "eh-eh-eh-eh" noise.)
2. Quickly fashion a weapon out of snow and ice cubes
    (use it to kill the caribou and/or polar bear).
3. If you see any bright lights. . . run like hell the other way.
4. Create a secure snow fortress. 
     (Keep in mind you just killed a caribou or polar bear so
     make it animal proof or fashion more snow-ice cube weapons.)
5. As appetizing as it looks, DO NOT eat the yellow snow.
6. Emergency fishing gear can be used to fish in open waters
    (Keep in mind you need to bring you're emergency fishing gear
      or you'll be up the Arctic creek without a popsicle stick.)
7. DO NOT go to the Arctic. 
     There's nothing there that you can't see in a zoo.
8. If you are on an all-banana diet you are in trouble,
     because bananas do not grow in the Arctic.
9. SERIOUSLY, did you go to the Arctic!?! 
     I just told you in steps 0 and 7 not to go.
10. If all else fails, leave the Arctic exhibit and head over to see
       Sigfried and Roy's white lions in the African exhibit
       (remember it's being renovated.)

In the African exhibit,

 it was nice to see the Bull Elephants in their native habitat.

There were a lot of statues around the zoo that were really life-like. 

BoBo really had a lot of fun posing with them. . .

. . .throughout the entire zoo . . .

. . .and Chicken had fun when she caught a lion by the tail.

Sadly, our  time at the zoo was soon over and we met up with Lishes for lunch.
We had a hard time picking a place to eat, there were a LOT of small town diners around as well as the famous Packos.  After much discussion we decided to go to a place that Lishes had tried the last time she came out to Toledo- Grumpy's.

Grumpy's was a nice, tiny, family owned and operated place.  The staff, despite the name, was very friendly and acted just like family.  Their menu was very comical and provided just the right amount of laughter.

A look inside Grumpy's menu:

There food was moderately priced. 
Bo give them 1/2 a dirty napkin for not having french fries,
but she also gives them 4 and 1/2 sporks for delicious food and a friendly atmosphere.
Chicken gives them 4 sporks because the waitress re-asked our order after it was given once, she didn't like their knives, and didn't like their soda.

Here is the unadorned burger:

Overall Toledo was a great place to visit for the day,

but we had a lot of WTF Toledo moments. 

Stay tuned for our next blog in which we will share all of our WTF Toledo moments. 

And remember folks,

being able to speak parseltongue is not a good thing;

if you don't believe us ask Harry Potter.