Chee Blog

End of visit from Rob's Parents

2009-04-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

Rob's parents came to visit for Ryan and Amber's birthdays. It was good to have them here. The kids warmed up to them right away.

Facebook revolution

2008-11-11T14:28:00.001-08:00

I joined Facebook awhile ago. Kitt just joined recently. With Kitt joining, it's kind of made me look at my page more. I added some new friends and checked out some old ones. Facebook is a really great way to keep in touch with people. A lot of people put photos up, which is really nice. I'm lazy so I haven't put up too many pictures, but Kitt has started putting up pictures so people can look at those. Hopefully we aren't opening ourselves up to too many privacy issues. We'll just have to keep an eye on it

Anniversary Dinner

2008-10-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Kitt and I went on our anniversary dinner on Saturday, Oct 18, 2008. Yes, yes, our anniversary is actualy Oct 21, but we didn't have enough time to take vacation on that day so we decided to do it on the weekend. I had checked out a bunch of good restaurants in DC and we decided a restaurant named Makoto. This was a traditional Japanese restaurant where the chef decided the menu for you for a fixed price. We headed off to DC around 1:30pm and went to the Navy Annex to do some shopping. Afterwards, we headed down to the restaurant. We walked around and found a small corner market that sold coffee. We walked around some more and discovered a restaurant that had an oyster bar. Since we still had an hour before our 6pm reservation, we stopped off at the oyster bar and had some oysters and a drink. The oysters were really good. Then we made it to Makoto for our 6pm reservation. The meal was good buyt overpriced. We had soft shell crab that had a tiny puffed rice coating. The coating was a little bit too much. With all the crunchiness you lost the flavor and texture of the crab. The highlight was the sashimi. I paid extra for the fatty tuna. It was excellent. It just melted in your mouth. The one weird thing was that there was some tough sinew in the fatty tuna. We had experience that before, so it's probably just an aspect of the fatty tuna. Kitt had the regular tuna, which was excellent as well. There was no fishy taste at all. The low point was the Kobe beef. I had paid extra for that and found it to be very fatty and a little tough even though they cooked it rare. It was my first taste of Kobe beef and I was underwhelmed.

All in all I think it was a good restaurant but not somewhere we would go again. It did make for a memorable anniversary dinner though

Outer Banks Trip to George's condo

2008-10-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Rob took a trip to George's condo last weekend with Roger, Steve, and George. We got in late Friday night, watched a movie and went to sleep. The next morning we woke up, had breakfast and played a round of golf. Afterwards we went to this amazing seafood buffet at Jimmy's Seafood Buffet. They had stone crab claws, king crab legs, Alaskan crab legs, and another variety that seemed like a cross between Alaskan and blue crabs. Rob ate way too much. After the feast, we went back to the condo and played some poker. Steve had the lucky streak at first, but he passed the luck to Rob towards the end of the night. At one point Rob chose to play 3 rounds of blackjack with him as dealer. The first hand, Rob had 10 - 6 and dealt himself a 5. The next two hands Rob had blackjack. Talk about luck. We should have gone to Atlantic City instead of Outer Banks. The next day we woke up, had breakfast and played some tennis. Afterwards we went back to the condo, took a shower, cleaned up, and went to Hooters to eat wings and watch some football. After that we headed home. Unfortunately there was an accident on 95 that caused us to take even longer getting home. All in all it was a great trip.

Camping Trip

2008-10-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

We went camping Oct 3 - 5 to Assateague Island. Ryan and Amber had a great time playing with their cousins and friends. Amazingly, we had 3 days of great weather. We headed out on Friday and arrived around 5pm. We quickly set up the tents and inflated the air mattress. We found that the air mattress is really nice since sleeping on sand is a lot like sleeping on a concrete slab. After that was all setup I went out and got the wood. When I got back we started up the fire and started making smores. The rest of the people got there around 9pm. We roasted some more marshmallows and then went to sleep. We forgot to put the garbage away. In the middle of the night we heard a bunch of stomping outside the tents. The horses had smelled the garbage and come over for a feast. We didn't go out to check, but we figured the horses didn't find anything interesting and just walked away. It was a little freaky to hear a bunch of stomping outside the tent in the middle of the night, though.

The next day we got up and had eggs and sausage for breakfast. During breakfast, a horse ambled up to our campsite looking for food. I was holding Amber, while eating, and the horse walked right up to me. I tried shooing the horse away, but it just kept coming closer. I wouldn't have been to worried, except that I had Amber right there. Plus all the kids were standing around the horse. I was afraid the horse would bite or kick one of the kids. Finally, I decided to pet the horse. That turned out to be the trick. The horse snorted, neighed and then walked away. I guess he didn't like to be pet. After that we played around a little bit and then packed everything up to catch some crab and fish at the dock. The crabbing was disappointing. We attached chicken necks to strings and lowered them into the water by the dock. The crabs were supposed to grab on to the chicken necks and then hang on when we raised the string. I guess all the crabs were gone for the season because we didn't even catch one. Fishing, on the other hand, was a great success. We caught at least 20 fish. They were a combination of bluefish, spot, and probably something else. We took them all back and fried them on a griddle above the fire. That was the freshest fish I've ever had. In the afternoon the kids played in the sand and went to a nearby park. That night we had chicken and short ribs for dinner followed by more smores.

The next morning we had more eggs and sausage for breakfast and then packed up to go. On the way back there was an accident on the Bay Bridge, which delayed us for about an hour. That turned out to be too much for Amber. We were about 20 minutes from getting home and she started crying and holding her mouth. All of a sudden, she threw up all over her seat. I quickly dove into the backseat, cleaned up the mess, and comforted Amber. She was fine after that so it must have just been car sickness.

All in all it was a great trip. We'll definitely be doing it again in the spring