Weekend Highlights

Friday night:

I went out to dinner and then out for some drinks with the best friend :)

Local bars, not as exciting as a night out downtown but still fun!

Saturday:

I went to Dayton for the day with my old college roommates for the Second Annual Kari McSwiney Memorial Golf Tournament for Education. Kari was one of my good friends from college, and was supposed to be one of our 7 roommates senior year of college. She was born with CVID, which is Common Variable Immunodeficiency. I learned all the horrible details of this condition from Kari, but to sum it up she basically was born with a shiesty immune system so if she caught the common cold, it would flair up to something more serious like pneumonia (in the most basic terms possible). She was earning her Bachelor's degree in Education at OU, so in honor of Kari her family began putting on a golf tournament to raise money for a scholarship for one student from her high school who is going to OU for a degree in education.

Although times like these bring back the horrible memory of losing Kari, it is also a great way to remember her and celebrate her life with all of the people she loved. We don't get the opportunity to see her family very often, and it was very nice to catch up. The picture above is of 3 of her other roommates from her junior year, and me and 3 of my roommates from senior year & our two houses knew each other through Kari.

The lovely lady with the shortest hair is my old roommate Mallory (one of the funniest people I know by the way) and she just so happens to be back on a plane to her new home in Australia as we speak! She moved there after graduation, met a nice Aussi man and never wants to come back! It was more than awesome to catch up with her and hear all about her experiences. She actually was writing a blog during her first year there. You can check it out here!

Sunday:

My co-director of summer camp and good friend Julie's bridal shower was this afternoon. It was a good time- typical bridal shower stuff! I told her about the game we played at Kay's bridal shower where the guests group up and compete to see who can make the best toilet paper wedding dress & she loved the idea! We played the game at her shower today and I was the lucky model who got to wear the dress. Our group didn't win, but we SO should have! She went with the funniest design- typical Julie! I'm hoping her MOH got a good picture of this!

I am spending the rest of the evening preparing for an interview (YES, interview!) that I have tomorrow morning. I'm actually not too thrilled about the position, which is kindergarten teacher at a private school near me. I LOVE kindergarten, but I'm not sure this school will be a good fit for me. It would be my first job and so I know I can't expect the best pay, but let me tell you it is PITIFUL. I may feel differently after I leave the interview and have learned more though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed! 

Hope you had a great weekend!

Who Dey? Dey da ones who lost to the BROWNIES :)

Once again, my weekend highlight was tailgating! It is one of my happy places, have I mentioned that? 

Backing up to Friday, I FINALLY got called for my first day of substitute teaching! Such a relief to finally be getting calls! I slept through my first phone call (due to my phone being on silent from waitressing the night before! :( I have changed my ringer to a loud obnoxious one and make sure it's on full blast each night) and I chickened out my second time getting called (because it was for seniors in high school and, let's face it, I still look 16...BUT I have vowed to accept any and all jobs that I get called for in the future, scary high school seniors included!) All this glory was almost ruined when I got a flat tire half way to the school... I held back tears and called my mom who came to my rescue! I made it to the school on time and had an awesome first day of subbing for first grade! It reminded me why I want to be a teacher and how wonderful it is to be in the classroom as opposed to a jobless post grad. I'm hoping that since I have gotten 3 calls in the past week and a half that this is a good sign!

Saturday most of the bridesmaids met with our bride-to-be (one of my best friends, Kay) and her mom to finish up some last minute shower planning, and to discuss the bachelorette party and wedding plans as well. The shower is next weekend, the bachelotette party is in 3 weeks and the wedding is now less than 3 months away on December 11! 

After our wedding planning sesh, the tailgating crew (including our husband-to-be's parents which was a fun surprise!) cuddled up and watched Paranormal Activity. I love a good scary movie, but this one was terrifying! For me anyways. If you're into scary movies I would recommend it just because it seems real and should give you a good scare, although some of us complained that it was a little slow, and I would have to agree. I think I would have had nightmares but luckily we had one big giant sleepover so I felt safe, even when Kay and Brandon's apartment was making scary noises all through the night :) 

We got up bright and early at 5 AM again to tailgate and we are now 3 for 3 for having an awesome time tailgating! We watched the game at the Blind Pig, and what made the day even more amazing was that we beat the Bengals! It's about time the Browns won a game! I'm not going to complain (much) because we won...BUT my question is where is Eric Wright's head at?! Every team we play knows damn well to cover Cribbs and their defense is on him instantly, yet Wright showed poor effort to cover T.O. when he knows (or should know) damn well that's who to cover. Imagine if Wright would actually do his job well? I mean you're only getting paid millions of dollars....you could at least pretend to try and do your homework before you hit the playing field sheesh.

Lindsay, Kay and me! Best friends :)

Cuddled up like grannies!

Love my Lindsay!

Most of the girls!

Girls flip cup team!

Pictures by the FREE stamp...Always necessary!

 Good Times! Had to borrow some of Lindsay's pictures! I wasn't the best paparazzi this time around!

"I love this city because of the hard working people that are here. It's a blue-collar town. When I think of Cleveland, I think of myself. They accept their football players with open arms and they show up every Sunday win, lose, or draw"
- Peyton Hillis {my boyfriend} ;)

Lebron who? Hillis is the man! How refreshing to have a professional sports player on a Cleveland team NOT trash talking this great city of ours and who appreciates their fans (Ahem, EDWARDS & LeBRON!)

 

Better late than never...Highlights from LAST weekend!

Up before the sun! 5 AM wake up call...arrive at 7AM! My two best friends!

All of us!

Well third times a charm I guess! The first two times I tried to blog about my tailgating experience from last weekend I got so frustrated trying to upload pictures that I quit. They wouldn't go in the order I wanted them in! GRR! So I decided not to be a quitter and let the big bad blog win and settled for just these two, although I took almost 100 pics!  Paparazzi much?

Tailgating has recently become a new happy place for me! Such a positive atmosphere and so far I'm 2 for 2 for an awesome time! We're planning on continuing to tailgate until the weather gets too brutally cold. 

We learned that tailgating is like camping, seriously. I made a checklist after our first attempt and we are constantly adding to it. We gave ourselves a D- grade for our first attempt....basically only getting points for showing up. Last weekend I'd say we moved up to B+ range! Lindsay and I found some good deals on browns gear for tailgating such as a browns folding chair for $20 at Target, reusable browns bags,  a mesh browns satchel, and tattoos all for under $5 each at Five Below, and t-shirts for around $6 at Marc's. We're set! :)

Weekend Highlights

Nick invited us back to his lake house for another fun weekend of tubing! It was a little chilly so we left the tubing to the boys and just took pictures, but just being on the boat was super fun! As soon as we were ready to head back, the boat decided to stop working. The bottom left picture is of Andy's plan to paddle us back to shore with a water ski, FAIL. The boat finally decided to work again but would not reverse, so the bottom right picture is of Nick pulling us into the dock! Good times!