a happy birthday weekend for my beautiful mother:

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go home to the burg to celebrate my beautiful mom's birthday with her; and I'm so so glad that I did. It was exactly what I needed and I found myself just wanting to stay a few days longer...maybe all the way through Thanksgiving! But...college calls. And teachers like to schedule lots of papers and exams right before (and after for that matter) any sort of break that we have.

But anyway!: it was a great little weekend home. I arrived on the megabus on Friday and my awesome dad picked me up. I spent lots of time with Trey (he was so excited the entire weekend!) and spent the entire weekend with my mom and dad. Friday night we actually went to the mansion where they have the Renaissance Fair every year. We watched the Edgar Allen Poe shows...and it.was.so.cool. All the people stayed in character the entire time and they were all extremely talented individuals. They put on three different stories for us, and it was a very different experience, but a very cool one at that. It sort of brought me back to the days of National History Day! ;)

Saturday I spent most of the day doing some birthday shopping for mom and I also took a trip to one of my favorite places in da burg: Salvo. I love browsing all the racks of clothes and shelves of knick-knacks...just seeing what I can find; the possibility of getting lucky! And I did! I found some awesome clothes there and I'm super excited to wear them!

I also baked a rather delicious (if I do say so myself) birthday cake for my mom! She asked for an angel food cake which I had never made before (super easy...don't let the strange contraption that you have to use fool you!) and told me to choose the topping. I chose cool whip, raspberries, and blackberries. YUMM! We went out to dinner in Hershey that night (again, more yummy food) and then came home to open presents, eat cake, and watch football and hockey. Before I knew it, I was the only one still awake! Mom, Dad, and Trey were all fast asleep on the couch...I guess everyone is just getting a little bit older ;)

Sunday I went to church with my mom and saw how much work they've gotten done on the new church: it's amazing! I feel like I didn't even go to school there for nine years. It's a little sad I guess, but that's all just a part of life...things change but you keep the memories forever :)  Mom and I spent the rest of the day shopping and then we ate lunch at the mall right next to the big Christmas tree...it's kind of a tradition of ours now that I love. 

The megabus was late. I got into Pitt two hours later than I was supposed to. But I had good company on the bus so it didn't bother me so much. I got some work done and enjoyed myself. It's nice when you're not in a rush.

This week has proved to be a rather long one. I think it's because I'm just looking forward to Thanksgiving Break so much...to be back with my family and my friends. I've got one school week down and one to go and lots of exams until I head back to the burg on the 22nd. Hopefully that just means the week will go faster ;)

And I'm looking forward to the ice rink being opened up in PPG next weekend! I'll definitely be making plans to head down there (hopefully more than once) and I'm also looking forward to spending the day with my aunts and cousin, Leah, for a day of thrift-store-shopping! One of my favorite past times! It's nice that they have included me in their pre-Thanksgiving tradition :) 

So I've got a good week and a half coming up I'd say and lots of cool things to look forward to. I've temporarily disabled my facebook! So that means more time for blogging and uhh...school work ;)  And lastlyyyy, I'd like to say that I hope all of my friends in Penn State are staying safe with all of these riots that have broken out around the campus. I don't support the violence, but I hope that you're all staying smart and staying out of it. 

Until next time!

incase you haven't heard...she's 

a "pro" at toilet-papering ;)

Halloweekend!

Happy belated Halloween from the best-lookin' college crayons out there! I know, I know...this post is suuuper late and I've been really lame on the blogging lately and my mom has been buuuuggggingggg me about updating it! So hopefully this holds you all over until later this week (hopefully monday!) when I can tell you allll about my wonderful weekend at home for my wonderful mother's birthday :)

 kaylie & i; let me just say that i am so so happy that

i'm becoming such good friends with kaylie this year;

she's an absolutely amazing person and i'm gonna

be so sad to see her go study abroad next semester!!

 steph & myself

 steph; myself; daniela; maggie

 kaylie!

the laurs :)

the 717 crew: steph, d, laur, & myself!

a big huuge thank you goes out to my extremely talented mom for making these awesome (and super duper warm) costumes for my friends and me! The warmth factor was especially nice considering that we had snow on halloween. crazy. i'd also just like to say that we were the hit of all the parties we went to! so many people asked for our pictures and complimented us on our creativity and how awesome we looked ;) a job well done. i think it's pretty safe to say that we'll be doing themed-costumes for the next two years to come for sure...

 kaylie, steph, & i on ESPN!

Heinz Field

ALSO: wednesday night was the football game! so steph, kaylie, and i decided to go (cus everyone else either had class or bailed...boooo!) and we ended up having the best time ever! The game supported helping fight depression amongst college students so we all waved bright green 'PITT CARES' towels throughout the game. It was also featured on ESPN and a couple people (mike included) saw the three of us dancin' away on tv!! Kaylie's mom was nice enough to send us the top picture: a still-shot of us on ESPN. How cool is that??

Other cool things that happened this week? I saw a flashmob at the Pete! performed by the pharmacy students! And I took another visit to the Children's Institute for another board game night. I also got lots and lots of work done and lots of good grades back so I guess that means all of my hard work is paying off!

I also spent the best weekend ever at home with my mom and dad; and that will be my next post ;)

HAPPY NOVEMBER!

TWO WEEKS UNTIL THANKSGIVING BREAK!

YAYYY!! :)

Pens & Pumpkins!

Well, it's been a very very busy past week and a half! I can't believe it's already Wednesday and that this weekend is Halloween! Despite battling the flu this past weekend (I'm feeling much much better now), I managed to have a pretty great week. The workload should be winding down after this weekend and I should be able to enjoy the last couple of weeks of the first semester. Time flies.

But anyway, last Wednesday night brought me a spontaneous visit from none other than one of my very best friends, Colleen!! Colleen is a huuuuge Pens fan, and when we found out that AE Student Rush would be giving out 500 tickets to students, we know that we haaaad to go. So, she drove on over, got super-duper lost on the way, and was greeted by Lauren, D, and myself. We woke up early on Thursday (yay for cancelled classes!) and treated her to the best breakfast in Oakland--Pamela's of course!

this time i got the crepes filled with chocolate chips, bananas, and whipped cream...mmmmmm soooo good! and Coll got an omelet!

Afterwards, I gave her a little tour of the campus and then we made our way over to the Student Rush line at the Consol Energy Center. We were about 12th in line I'd say and we got there around 12:30 for the gates to open at 6:00. Despite the totally random and awful freezing cold weather, we had an AWESOME time! We met so many cool people in line and eventually a DJ came out and started playing music for us too. But here's me, summing up all the other cool things that happened to us in line:

1. the Pen's coach, as well as their GM, came out and handed everyone in line some hot chocolate!

2. colleen got her jersey signed by Dan Bylsma (the coach!)

3. i won a $50 gift card to american eagle! -thank youuu smartphone!

4. four of the players came out and gave all of us in line, boxes of pizza!

5. ours was personally delivered by one of colleen's absolute favorite players, jordan staal.

6. i got interviewed by some sort of pittsburgh news station!

7. friends and family saw us on tv receiving pizza!

 jersey signing!

 jordan staal!

We got awesome seats. We were about 15th row and some of the first people to enter the arena it seemed like! And what was even cooler? My friend, Alexis, from back home..who also student rushed and was like, second in line, ended up sitting DIRECTLY behind us with her friends! It was crazy! And also super cool to run into so many people I knew at the game (i ran into Ruben, Marissa, AND Kaylie! and saw some people from my high school too!) It's so weird that I'm starting to recognize people when I'm out in Pittsburgh now, after only being here for three semesters...

But anyway, the game was great. The Pens defeated Montreal, and we had an aweeesome time. We even saw ourselves on the jumbotron! So THAT was pretty cool...But I think what made the whole day so incredibly awesome was the fact that Colleen was there, and that the visit was completely unplanned until the day-of. I love those kinds of things; it just doesn't get much better than that.

 our amazinggg seats!

 alexis!

kaylie!

So after Colleen left early Friday morning, I pretty much spent the rest of my weekend sleeping. Literally. I've never slept so much in my liiiife. But it was definitely the way to go. I managed to pull it together for a few hours on Saturday in order to participate in Pitt Make A Difference Day (PMADD for short). I signed up with the floor of the residence hall that I'm living in, and we were assigned Polish Hill (too bad D wasn't there!!) We spent the morning in two different lots, pulling up weeds and TREES. It was a lot of hard work (and as my mom definitely knows, weeding is not my favorite thing in the world), but I'm super glad that I was able to give back to the community. Not to mention that the people there were soooo grateful for what we were doing for them. 

There were about 90 of us assigned to this particular area, and from there we were split up into a few different sites. The Polish Hill Community actually has their own blog in which they took some pictures (photo cred) and wrote about the work that we did! You can read all about it here if you're interested! 

Once I was feeling better, I really got down to work this week and I'm pretty much caught up on everything that I need to be doing. Last night, Steph and I took a nice little trip over to Squirrel Hill in search of some pumpkins! Tis the season, right!? We found some cute little ones and headed over to a friend's house for an APO event: Pumpkin Carving! It was a blast. I really love this group of people; we ended up staying there until about 11pm just because we were having such an awesome time! (and because steph was going super hardcore with her carving). I'd say it was the perfecttt way to get in the Halloween spirit and I love lookin' over and seeing the little guy smiling that toothy smile on my desk ;)

 Kaylie and D

Daniela and Lauren's Pumpkin

My little guy!

So, I wish everyone a great Halloweekend (see what I did there??) and I hope that you all get into the Holiday Spirit and enjoy some spooky music, cool costumes, lots of candy, and even some trick-or-treaters! oh how I miss those days! I know that we will definitely be having a blast this weekend here at Pitt!

Stay Safe!

   

a busy busy weekend

I have to say, this past weekend has been pretty awesome. It felt as if I was constantly on the move...and sometimes you just need weekends like that. Thursday, I went laser-tagging for the first time ever with a few members from APO as a fellowship event...it.was.awesome. I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with an excuse as to why I've never been laser-tagging before. I've got nothin'. It was so much fun! And a really really great way to get to know some of the members better. I'm so glad that I've joined this group...the people are unbelievably nice, sometimes it doesn't even seem real!

Friday night, Pitt started off Homecoming weekend festivities with some beauuutttiiifullll fireworks! The best part though? I didn't even have to venture out into the cold to see them ;) Another great perk to my awesome view. They even set a lot off around the Cathedral, and they seemed to "travel" up the building...it was really really cool. Maggie sprinted over to my room to watch them with me...we had some OneRepublic playing in the background and we just stood at my window, taking it all in (in the warmth!) It was just grand ;)

Saturday morning, Mag, Alyssa, and I woke up early to get some good seats for the football game! We stopped for some breakfast and coffee beforehand and made our way over to Heinz field via big yellow school buses. We got there a little before 10am (the game started at noon) and found ourselves some prime time 8th row seats! By the end of the game, we were down to the 4th row and saw ourselves on the mega-tv a couple different times...it was the closest that I've ever been for a football game! I don't know if I'll ever want to sit far away again!

Once the game was about to start, Daniela, Kaylie, and Rebecca (Kaylie's friend that was visiting!) joined us in our awesome seats. Sadly, the Panthers didn't pull out the win this time around, but it was a really good time nonetheless...AND we got to experience the celebration of Pitt Band's 100th year!!! They were awesome. They brought back as many Band Alumni as they could (not to mention, cheerleaders and twirlers as well!) and put on a great halftime show for everyone. What a talented group of people...

Afterwards, after a much-deserved nap, a group of us made our way to the APO Potluck. And all I need to say about that is: Lots of delicious food. Lots of incredibly nice people. And Lots and Lots of fun! I'm super mad at myself for not having anyyy pictures of the event, but I was just too darn busy chattin' it up with so many people to pull out my camera!

Thennnnn I got word that my friends, Nate and George were here for the weekend! So of course I met up with them, and it just so happened that all of my friends thought they were AWESOME...so what a great way to end a Saturday night, right!?

We thought we would start Sunday off the right way with a hearty breakfast from Pamela's (yum yum yummm) before we headed to The Children's Institute in Shadyside. We volunteered there to play boardgames with the kids and I have to say, it was a very uplifting experience. Caroline and I played 'Sorry' with a group of three kids who turned out to be some of the most caring and grateful people that I have ever met. And so polite too! It was a humbling experience...and I'm really looking forward to going back on the first of November.

And it wouldn't be a Sunday without the mention of homework...Carol, Maggie, and I gathered in the lounge on our floor to get some work done. It was a pretty successful idea and a good start to a somewhat busy week ahead. I've got a midterm this week, a meeting with my teacher, a video project, a gigantic psychology paper due, and lots and lots of cool things to read! Two weeks left in October and it's going so fast! 

Happy fall! I hope you're all enjoying the change in colors

as much as I am! :)

  

National Dessert Day!

Cheers to National Dessert Day!

to celebrate this momentous occasion, Maggie, Kaylie, Jackie, Alyssa, Beth, and I went to this cute little cupcake shop on Craig St. called Dozen Bakery. I got a chocolate cupcake and it was rather delicious; don't you just love these random little holiday's that I keep discovering? I sure do ;)

and last wednesday night, before our APO meeting, Daniela, Maggie, Steph, and I baked some delicious cookies for the APO bake sale: Halloween sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies! 

homecoming weekend here at Pitt; i'll be sure to have some cool pictures from the weekend for you all by the time it's all said and done! 

happy mid-october! 

  

wednesday:

leave it to my friends to find the 

ONLY picture taken of us on saturday night!

gosh, i love them.

what a good-lookin' group of people..

am i right!??

happy mid-week!

  

fall break:

This past weekend was just what i needed; it felt so good to be home and to be surrounded by friends and, more importantly, family. I feel so blessed to have the parents and the brothers that i have...and yes, a wonderful puppy too :)

It was a pretty laid back weekend; i didn't get as much homework done as i wanted to...but that's pretty typical of going home so i really don't mind. it's 'back to the grind' today and for the rest of the week...but that's just fine with me because i have some pretty wonderful friends to help keep me happy :)

some high points of my weekend (in pictures):

 making october treats with mom

shopping & lunch @ ABC!

 hangin' out with jim
(& teaching him ASL!)

 shopping with mike
(& sitting in car dealership
waiting rooms!)

 neato burrito cowboy crunch
for lunch

 playing cornhole in the backyard
on cool Steeler boards with the whole fam!

cracking up nonstop while 
playing said cornhole game...

 taking some of mike's famous
buffalo chicken dip to work with me

 eating my dad's famous french toast 
for breakfast (no, but seriously,
its the best FT around!!)

 car rides with trey & dad!

 walks around wildwood; chattin'
with dad; and getting some 
rita's italian ice afterwards :)

seeing lots of turtles!

& even some ducks...

 baking some cinnamon streusel muffins..

 and taking them back to pitt with
me for breakfast for the next couple
of days...or maybe less than a couple
of days because i just keep eating them!

playing catch in the backyard with 

this handsome guy ;)

some high points of my weekend (in words):

1. catching up over some starbucks with rachael, priscilla, and chris. (and boy was that pumpkin spice frappucino delicious!)

2. enjoying dinner at teds and ruby tuesdays with my wonderful parents.

3. 50/50 with mike and jim; i laughed, i cried...it was awesome.

4. tater tot casserole.

5. egg sandwiches and coffee in the mornings.

6. seein some friends at the reegz.

7. field of screams and a diner trip with the crew from the beach! (really mad at myself for not taking ANY pictures!)

8. laughing at all the strange people we came across with mike...and then realizing that we're even stranger...

9. grilled cheese by mom.

10. spending the last day home with dad :)

11. laughing over the new heytell app that mike, dad, & i each got :P

12. finding out that i will officially be seeing alex lewis in 76 days; i can't wait!!!

i hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend as well, even if it wasn't very long. happy almost-mid-october! (isn't that crazy??)

goodbye for now ;)