Good Luck to Keith and Amy!

Keith and Amy took off to Istanbul yesterday to begin their journey around the world. We will miss you both but can't wait to Skype at the holidays and hear all your wonderful adventures!

Can't wait to see the first post on www.Greenaroundtheglobe.com !!

Good Luck!!

A break from the cold...

I just got back from California visiting some friends. It was a great break from the freezing weather. We went to Laguna beach and took the train form LA to San Diego. Thought I would share a few of my pretty pics :)

Cincinnati comes to a hault...

In case you haven't heard Cincy was hit pretty hard by the big winter storm that moved across the the MidWest. Since it was the first major storm of the season, it has been confirmed that this city does not know how to handle snow. It all started overnight on Monday, leading into Tuesday. We woke up on Tuesday with about 6 inches on the ground and then yesterday evening it started sleeting and icing, and then wrapped up this morning with another 6 inches of snow. Needless to say...shoveling was not fun :) The pic is one that I took of the back deck.

Stay Warm!!!

Gram's New Ride...

Just a family update...Gram purchased a new car a few weeks ago. She is flying around town in a new Toyota Matrix! Don't worry she bought it in black, not the crazy orange color :)

Welcome to the World Wide Web...

Grandma has officially joined the 21st century and was visited by the Geek Squad to help her set up her new laptop! She was also savy enough to create a gmail account and set up her email. In case you haven't heard yet Gram's email address is ljbogenschutz@gmail.com

Start emailing!!!

And the winner is......

Katie Bogenschutz...via Aunt Peg -- for theBEST COOKIE in the 1st Annual Kroger Holiday Cookie Extravaganza Taste-Off!!

I made Aunt Peg's wonderful "Snowball Surprise" Cookies for our office Christmas Cookie Competition and I won for Best cookie!!

In case anyone else wants to spread the goodness of Snowball Surprises, here is the winning recipe :)

Ingredients:
~ 1- package of regular Oreo’s
~ 1- 8 ounce brick of regular Cream Cheese
~ 1- package of Kroger White Chocolate Melting Bark (24 ounces)


Instructions:
1. In a food processor, grind the pack of Oreo’s into a fine dust
2. Add the brick of cream cheese to the Oreo dust and mix together until a dough is formed.
3. Roll the dough into little balls (Size = about the diameter of a quarter) and place on cookie sheet.
4. Refrigerate for at least an hour to let the dough firm up.
5. Melt the white chocolate either in a double boiler or in the microwave.
6. Using a toothpick coat the entire ball in white chocolate and set on wax paper to cool
7. Once the white chocolate has hardened, ENJOY!

*Note: Refrigerate cookies once completed because of the cream cheese in the recipe.

2008 Christmas Exchange

3-Alarm fire on Eastern Ave.

The red apartment building next door to our house caught on fire ;ast night/this morning...Here is a link to an article about it. And below is my encounter --

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081014/NEWS01/310140014

Annie and I are OK, but it has been a long morning to say the least. And the house is OK…thank goodness.

I was woken up at 2:50am by a semi blowing its horn for like a minute so I got up and looked outside and people were running out of the building and yelling to get out. I ran downstairs and saw that the back of the building was a huge fire. So I called 911 (with a bunch of other people) and the proceeded to watch this building turn into the biggest fire I have ever seen…fire was billowing out of all 4 floors windows and people were climbing out of the fire escapes. We had to stay outside from 3am until 6am while they were fighting the fire and then there were fears that the building might collapse. I just feel so bad for the people because they are so poor to begin with and now they are sitting on the street still with red cross and they have nothing.

Our street just opened back up to traffic and it is 10am. It was seriously the biggest fire I have ever seen. I felt like we were in a movie at some points. But I wanted to let everyone know that we are OK and so is the house.

Hurricane Ike vs. Cincinnati...

One Point Ike!!!

So I am sure everyone in Cincy knows what happened but for you out of town-er's, i thought I would give you an update...

It is a beautiful day tailgating for the bengals game, and then we enter the stadium...clouds roll in, but still no rain and then incredible winds start up. Apparently they were clocked at 75 mph. It was crazy windy during the entire game, but nothing to be alarmed about, until we leave the disaster of the game and walk outside for out trip home. Trees down, siding and shingles flying, the Ohio River having white caps like the ocean, and no power! We returned home to find out that we have some siding hanging on by a hair, but no further damage, other than lots of trees down. But get this...Duke is saying that people won't have power for 3-4 days!

Annie and I slept at my dad's last night because he had power because of new development and power lines being underground. Annie was lucky enough like the rest of the city for work to be cancelled. But have no fear, by some act of God my office and the Kroger data centers have backup generators, so I am here at work :( Just doesn't seem fair, no does it.

Hope Ike didn't hit anyone else...it really put a true hurricane in perspective cinsidering we only had partial winds. Imagine double the wind plus the rain...not fun!!

My New Best Friend...

I was out on Frisdat night and ran into the one and only Chad Johnson :) THought everyone would like to see the pic!