Funny Things

Well by now most of the events from my last post have happened. The Steelers won their 6th Super Bowl,Congress has set a new date for the DTV transition to June 12th, and Spring Training has begun in Florida & Arizona. Of course, there has been numerous other events that have taken place as well. President Obama & Congress passed the largest bill in the history of the United States in an attempt to "stimulate" the economy. While it has been a few weeks since its passage, little has actually gotten into the economy. We will see if it does any good.
On the home front, things continue to be pretty good. Cindy was hired by a basement improvement company to work part-time and it is a very good company as well. She also will be helping with the census for the United States towards the end of this month as well. As for Robbie. Well, lets say that each day brings something new & different from him. He has increased his vocabulary very well and continues to be a joy to have as our son! Just within the last few weeks, he has caught on to use words at the right time. Words such as "please" and "thank you" are coming out really well. Of course, there are times when Cindy or myself will give him something and he will respond "Thank you Robbie". While there are times we try to correct him in this area, the important thing is that he is saying the words. Last night while getting him ready to take his bath, Cindy had asked him if he had a "happy tummy"? Well, his response was "I have a happy tummy!". He looks very cute with his little belly sticking out after eating and there are times he likes to pat his tummy. It is very cute & funny. Also, Cindy has heard him chatting away in the mornings while waking up and upon opening the door one time, she caught him talking to his stuff animals in his crib. One of these times, we need to get a picture of this happening to share with you folks. I did ask him one morning recently if he was having a meeting with his friends and his response was "yea". Who knows, maybe one day he will be a leader! We shall see!
Well, spring training is underway and only a month until Opening day. The Tigers are looking pretty good so far and I can hardily wait for the season to start! Hopefully they will challenge for a playoff position this year and cause some rumblings. We will see!
Later!

Yup! Its me again!

Greetings everyone!
While we will finish January of 2009 tied (as of this post) with the famous blizzard of 1978 with amount of snow (which was a tad over 30 inches) in the Toledo area, I am very much ready for spring to get here and say good bye to the snow. While I am not sure what Robbie thinks of snow, he has ventured out into it a few times with his snowsuit and it was quite funny. He tried to help daddy shovel the walk during one of the heavier snowfalls (we had maybe 4 to 5 inches on the ground, which was very fluffy), he tried to move some snow off the walk and did a good job. He fell down a couple of times trying to get around the small piles and wandering in the snow near the house. Cindy was able to get a few photos of him during this event and they turned out well.
Also, you will see a picture of Robbie wearing glasses! We had his eyes checked out and found out he will need glasses for a good portion of his life. While his vision is not terrible, there is a need for him to have them on to see a bit clearer. So there we go!
This weekend will be Super Bowl 43 (and yes, I am older than the Super Bowl) in which Pittsburgh will look to add ring #6 to their legacy. They will take on the Arizona Cardinals, who really surprised many to reach the championship. Hopefully it will be a good, close game. We will find out this Sunday evening! After that, I will wait patiently for baseball season to get going and see if my Tigers make a rebound after last years dismal season.
One last item. With the failure of the bill to delay the change over to all digital television, we only have a few weeks before we find out how well everyone adjusts to this new method of transmission of television signals. It shall be interesting!

Chile Trip

Greetings once again!
Here is a link to the pictures that I took while in Chile. Most of them are at the orphanage where we did most of the ministry. If you have questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment.
Here are a few links to check out!
http://picasaweb.google.com/FranklinTremblay/ChilePhotos#
http://visionforchile.org/wordpress/

Until next time!

It seems like forever!

Greetings and Happy New Year!
Time sure has flown by since my last post on this site. Cindy and I had a good 7th wedding anniversary back in September, I went on my very first missions trip to Santiago, Chile in early October (Cindy & Robbie stayed home), Robbie is continuing to get more words added to his vocabulary (one of which is "Dude!") and is beginning to get closer to that oh so important season of POTTY TRAINING!. It has been a very good time for all of us as we got things put together to put up our Christmas tree, decorate the house a bit (done mostly by Cindy) on the inside, purchase gifts for everyone without going broke in the process and running up a large credit card debt, and get Robbie a few birthday gifts too! As most of the sports world would find out that a pro football team can lose all their regular season games (the Lions a purrfect 0-16) and place themselves in the elite of folklore for ages to come, thus insuring that the only way to look is up and even 1 win would improve their record for the next season (and very likely get them another number 1 pick overall in the draft like this next season). We also saw for the first time in American history, an African-American elected to the Presidency of the United States! However, Mr. Obama (and Congress) will face a huge uphill climb to find a way to get America back on its feet as he will inherit a very sluggish economy, home foreclosures and unemployment in the double digits for the first time in over 15 years. While all this may seem kind of bleak, the fact that God is still in control makes things a bit easier to deal with during this time.
We also celebrated Robbie's 2nd birthday back on the 29th of December and went out for pizza (one of his many favorites!) with my mom. He had a very good time with it and will have a party this coming Saturday with some of his friends at a place that has inflatables indoors and fairly inexpensive too!
Well, that concludes this entry for this blog. Here are a couple of updated photos of Robbie and the fun things he gets himself into at times!

Georgia Part dos (2)

Greetings once again everyone!
As I ended the previous post discussing our family trip to NE Georgia back in June, there was quite a bit of things that had taken place while we were there. We were able to spend a few days with Robbie's grandparents and had a great time. We strolled around the town where they were staying. If you ever get a chance to visit Helen, Georgia, I think you will enjoy it very much. We took a horse & carriage ride thru part of the town and it was very relaxing. The name of our horse was Sampson and he was very strong too! We were able to take in a round of putt-putt golf course while in Helen. The course was pretty tricky at times. There were some holes that had multiple levels, ramps, and other obstacles to make it a bit more challenging than your regular par 2 course. I did not fair very well either. Maybe some other time.
We did go to a local beach back in Hiawassee a few times and it was very nice. Not too crowded, clean beach, good area to swim and had a play area for Robbie to play in as well. He enjoyed his time at the beach and really enjoyed the water too.
We headed back early on Sunday morning (around 7:30am) and did do pretty well getting back to Ohio around 8pm that evening. We met with Shelby's folks for dinner (hey Scott & Dawn!) at Quaker Steak & Lube in Canton. During the trip back to Ohio, Robbie did not want to take a nap at all. He kept fighting sleep and did take a cat nap (about 20 minutes or so) around mid-afternoon. However, he did eventually fall asleep on the way home from Canton (which was around 10am) and slept the whole night.
Well, it is now been a few months since our trip and things are going well. Next week, Cindy begins a new position at the YMCA in their aftercare program. She will be the director at Bennett Adventure Academy here in Toledo. She will be working in the afternoon most of the time, thus being able to spend more time with Robbie as well. I have been getting myself prepared to go on my very first missions trip to Chile this coming October. I will be part of 8 people from my church and a total of 35 from across the US that will be going to a girl's orphanage in Santiago for 2 weeks. While there, we will be building a new building, renovating 2 others to increase useful space and minister to the girls that are at the orphanage. The name of the ministry that runs it is called vision for Chile. They have a website that you can check out if you want to find out more information. It is www.missionforchile.org. We will be there from October 4th thru the 19th with some days for sightseeing as well. I hope to be able to get some pictures while on the trip.
That is about it for the time being. In a few weeks, Cindy and I will celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary on September 1st and it sure has been a fun & enjoyable marriage.
I have added a few more pictures from our trip. I trust you will enjoy them.
Until next time!

Fore score and eons ago......

I can't believe it has been over a month and a half since my last post here! So much has happened in this time frame that I hope to be able to remember all the events that took place. To start things off, today (July 29th) is Robbie's 19 month anniversary of living! He continues to grow a little each day and can be a funny little boy most of the time. He recently had 2 new teeth added to the lower part of his mouth near the front. He had a rough time with them coming in. But he seems to be getting back to normal at this point. The only problem we have with him at this point is he likes to bite (not a good thing). Some of the times it is by accident when he tries to get up on the couch or a chair and he uses everything to get to that point. Well, if mom or dad are near, we might get a little bite that can be quite painful. Maybe if we bought him a mouth piece....(just kidding). He is also getting very good at saying words like "car", "ball", "hi" and a very cute, high pitched "bark" like a dog. Of course, while we were on our family vacation to NE Georgia back in late June, we brought along our "niece" Shelby to help entertain Robbie. For about 2 days, we would ask Robbie to say "Shelby". Well, one morning, we were up and getting breakfast put together. Robbie just started going off with "Elby"! And he would say this about 5 or 6 times in a row! It was quite funny some of the times because he would walk out into the living room, point up to the ceiling fans (there were fans all over the cabin) and call out to "Elby". He has continued to mention Shelby (aka Elby) at different times since we have been home from Georgia and it is great to hear.
Some of the things we did while in Georgia did include seeing Cindy's brother Joe. He has began ministerial studies thru Columbia Internation University. He was taking 2 weeks of classes to get things going and will occasionally return to the States from Taiwan to do more in class work. There are some classes he can do on-line that will go towards his degree as well. His next trip to the States will be around December/January timeframe for the next 2 week session. We also went to a church where the pastor is the person that lead Cindy to Christ back in the early 90's. They were both attending Clemson during this time and he was a member of the men's soccer team. He is now a pastor at a Presbyterian church outside of Atlanta in Douglasville. We had a good time and enjoyed the service as well. We also went to the Coca-cola muesum in downtown Atlanta, and despite not being a Coke fan, I did have a good time. Robbie spent the day with Grandpa and Grammie at our cabin while Cindy, Shelby and myself went to check this place out. They had a short movie (about 30 minutes I believe) that was in 4D. You had to wear special glasses to see the show and I found it very cool! It would be interesting to see a few movies in this format...like all 6 Star Wars, Lord of the Rings triology and Saving Private Ryan. They also had a room that contained all the soda (or pop) that Coke makes all over the world. There is something like 64 flavors and a few of them were not too bad! I did try one that did leave a nasty taste in my mouth (I think it was from the Middle East region) so I quickly went over to get a full cup of Barq's root beer. It took care of the taste. We had also made a day trip to Cindy's old stomping grounds in Clemson,SC. We met up with a good friend and former tennis coach of Cindys that is now the compliance officer for the football team. We had lunch at one of the favorite spots in downtown Clemson and the food was really good! We then spent the rest of the afternoon on a sightseeing tour of Clemson's campus, with Cindy being out guide. It is a beautiful campus and we was able to get some good pictures as well. Some of them will be posted with this post.
The drive down to Georgia was pretty decent. We left Toledo around 6:30pm and headed to Canton to pick up Shelby. We made stops about every 250 miles or so for gas and to streach out as well. Needless to say, Robbie slept all night until we were west of Charlotte, NC. There were a few times he woke up for about 10 minutes or so when we made stops along the way. But then he would go back to sleep shortly after getting back on the road. We arrived in Atlanta around 10am on Saturday and I was ready to hit the sack! We went to the place Joe had been staying until our hotel room became available later that afternoon.
I will close for the time being since it is time to head home. Here are a few pictures from this trip. Enjoy!

Greetings again!

Howdy everyone!
Well here we are about to hit mid-June and it has made its statement that we could be looking forward to a storm-filled summer. Within the last week, our area has had some pretty severe weather that has included tornadoes, very high winds (almost 100 mph) in some areas, and quite a bit of rain as well. There have been some trees/branches that have came down due to the storms and of course, lost power in some areas here. Fortunately, we have been spared of any damage. The last storm that came last night (Monday, June 9th) brought down a large tree at the other end of our street. I am not sure if there was any damage caused, but it appears there was none. Hopefully things will calm down and we will have some good weather (and a bit cooler too).
Needless to say, life has been busy for us as usual (nothing new right?). We finished up our classes to foster/adopt through Lucas County on the 31st of May and now we just need to complete some forms to turn in to the Children's Service that will allow us to foster to adopt a child through the county. There will be a few other things that we will have to do as well once we turn everything in to be licenced. But it should not be much of a problem since some of the items are stuff that we had to do to get Robbie.

Speaking of the little guy, he has added another tooth. While it was a bit painful for him, he seems to be getting better and back to being a cute little boy. Also, he got another haircut that makes him look more like a little boy than a baby. He is also learning a few words too! Some of the words that he can say are mommy, daddy, and hi. There are a few others that he mumbles at times that sound pretty close to actual words and I am sure in a little while, he will expand his vocabulary to include some other words. Just the other day, Cindy had called her dad to see how things were going since their return from vacation. Well, Robbie was fussing a bit since mommy was giving her attention to his grandpa and not him. Well, Cindy placed the phone near him and he kept saying "Hi" a few times to Grandpa. From the sound of the chatting, he made Grandpa's day! It is utterly amazing how fast they grow up before your eyes. While we have heard numerous times that time flies by with your children growing up, it is hard to believe that even a year has passed since we dedicated Robbie at church! Just to see his smile and his little eyes light up when he is playing with you, it a pure delight! As Cindy sometimes says, "I want another one". That pretty much sums it up for me too. He is such a blessing to Cindy and I (even when he doesn't listen to us) that it is hard to imagine our lives without him. We are looking forward to watching this little boy, our son, grow up before our eyes and all the things he will learn, both the easy way and the hard way.
Well, within the coming week, Cindy's brother Joe will be heading to the United States to begin his ministerial studies to become a pastor in Taiwan. We will be able to see him on our upcoming trip to Georgia for our family vacation this year. It will be good to see him again since it has been some time since Cindy has seen him. My prayer is that gas prices will drop a bit more before our trip takes place as the average is over $4.00 a gallon. We will see!
As I wrap this blog up, just glad to see that the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup over the Pittsburgh Penguins 4 games to 2. That gives the Red Wings 11 Cups overall and their 4th in the last 11 years. Maybe next year they will be able to repeat. We will see.
Until next time, have a great day!