The best birth control money can't buy...

As you might all know, the arrival of my second nephew came a little unexpected and really threw off Jill's schedule for help. So, everyone chipped in to remake a new schedule. This meant that I would be helping for 8 days instead of 4 and starting a week earlier. So, last Tuesday I started my duties as the "helper" for the week at Jill's house. My biggest concern going into the week was that I was going to be so zonked from chasing after the kids that I wouldn't have the energy to do much else, which is only a concern since I am trying to get in shape for Outward Bound (I promise more on this soon). Boy was I right! It seems like taking care of a 1 year old wouldn't be all that much work, but it wore me out. Fortunately, Jill is more mobile than she thought she would be and is able to handle the kids pretty much on her own for a couple of hours so I can get some other things done. But, by the time I get home in the evening all I want to do is lay on the couch and go to bed. I can't even imagine how exhausting it would be if that was my full time job.

BUT, despite how tiring it is...it is also very fun to spend so much time with my nephews. While Aaron is mostly just sleeping,eating and looking cute, Peter is a crawling, toy playing, mischieve attracting little person. During my first four days, Peter and I played, went for walks, went to the pool, and chased each other around the house. One of my favorite things to do with him is take him to the swing, because he gets the biggest grin on his face. One of Peter' favorite things to do with me, and I'm told pretty much everyone else, is throw his toys/tupperware/balls all over the place and watch me chase them and put them back. At one point, he actually had me sweating from trying to keep up with his mess making! Maybe playing with him all day is enough of a workout in itself. Occasionally I do get a break when Peter gets distracted by Ralph and tries to pull on his ears or pull his hair out, which is his idea of "petting". Another "break" time, which is so cute, is right before naps when Peter gets to watch his Baby Einstein. One day, Ralph came along and let Peter hold his paw through the whole show. This was the cutest thing ever...I only wish I had my camera at the time.

So, while spending time with my nephews is so fun I have decided that my sister has taken on one of the hardest jobs in the world. She asked me several times last week, "Aren't you so jealous of my life?" Maybe someday, my answer will be "yes", but for now spending a few hours a day with my nephews is all I can handle! I'm looking forward to spending some more time with the kids and my sister starting again on Tuesday.

Life is funny sometimes...

This may sound like a tired lesson to some of you, but something that I found out about yesterday really put things in perspective and made me do some thinking. I was chatting with my old teammate/roommate, Sasha, online when she congratulated me for being recognized as an ITA(Intercollegiate Tennis Association) Scholar-Athlete for achieving above a 3.5 GPA in the last academic year. On top of that, our team as a whole was named to the ITA All-academic team for earning a cumulative team GPA of 3.2. Both of these are things that I hadn't been able to achieve throughout my initial 4 years of college. I'm not normally one to shout to the world about my achievements, but I felt like it would be worth while to reflect on what this means in the overall scheme of things. When I got thinking further, I realized that a little over a year ago I was probably at one of, if not THE, lowest points in my life. The passing of my Dad and tearing my ACL in the same year was a brutal reality. At the time, I thought a lot about how cruel life could be. Well, here I am a year and a half later with a very opposite outlook on life. Not only did I get to come back to Penn State and play an extra year of tennis because of a rule that happened to be changed the year I got hurt, but I accomplished more in this past year than I had in the previous 4. I earned the #1 spot on my team, I got much more involved with the community and school organizations, I won the True Grit award (selected from over 800 student-athletes), and I had my best year academically, earning recognition for it. Thinking about this really made me smile. It also made me realize that if things hadn't gotten so bad, I probably wouldn't have appreciated everything that has happened in the past year. It is a lesson I have learned before and it's probably a lesson I will learn again....sometimes things have to get really bad in order for them to get really good!

If you want to read the article about the ITA awards click here!

Peter's Birthday Party

Tomorrow, little Petey turns 1. I can't believe how fast time goes! This past weekend, my sister had a party for him and of course it was themed. Since the olympics are going on, the house was full of flags from all different countries and the colors of the olympic rings. And, in honor of the location of the games we had Chinese food. Peter slept through the first part of his party and was a little confused to wake up to about 15 people in his house, but he was soon playing with his friend morgan, stuffing his face with TWO cupcakes and opening presents. The funniest part of the whole day was trying to get Petey to wear his birthday hat. Morgan is the daughter of a friend of Jill's, and her Mom told her it was her job to keep the hat on Peter. She took this very seriously! It was pretty funny to watch Morgan continue to try to get the hat on Peter and for him to totally refuse to wear it. Peter got a lot of presents and some really neat new toys to play with. It was also cool for me to see him interact with his new brother Aaron a little bit. I'm not quite sure he knows what to think of the whole thing yet, but he likes to give his brother hugs and kisses. And, okay...sometimes he likes to hit him. But, my guess is that they will be best friends in a short time. Enjoy the few pictures I was able to get until my camera died!

Jammin Java on a whim

This past weekend I had planned to move all of my stuff home to McLean since my apartment lease is ending on August 16th. I had also told my sister that I wouldn't be able to make it home for Peter's actual birthday, so she planned to have his party on Sunday. Originally, I had planned to move on Saturday, attend the b-day party on Sunday and then drive back to State College since Rich had to work on Monday. But, on Thursday night I logged onto my myspace account and noticed that one of my friends had posted a new song from Meiko. She is a singer/song writer that I started listening to a few months ago. When I clicked on her page, I realized that she was going to be playing at a coffee shop in Vienna, VA. I initially felt bummed out because I knew Rich probably wouldn't want to go, since it would get us home really late. To my surprise, he immediately said, "Let's get tickets." And, the rest is history. Another artist that Rich likes, Joe Purdy, was playing there that night too so I guess that was the extra insentive. Two artists we had never heard of, Jay Nash and Chris Seefried, also played. I was so glad we went, because the show was awesome and we got to listen to almost 4 hours of accoustic music! We ended up getting back to State College at 3am giving Rich less than 4 hours of sleep, but I think he would agree it was worth it! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, because I used up all of my battery power at the birthday party.

Compulsive Movie Buyer...No MORE!

In an effort to simplify my life, I recently decided to get rid of most of my DVD and VHS movie collection. For those of you who know me well, you can imagine how hard this was for me! There were a few that I just couldn't part with, but I had over 200 movies. Isn't that insane? Fortunately I was able to get my movie buying addiction under control this past year and in the process realized what a silly thing it was that I had accumulated so many DVD's. Plus, moving them is a pain in the butt! So, I made a list of all the movies I didn't want and let my Mom and Sister take their pick. Once they decide, I will get rid of the rest by giving them away or selling them to a Pawn Shop. I only hope that after getting rid of all of them I don't have the urge to buy more!

In DUE time

I recently decided to sell a few of my things on craigs list. After all of the success that Jill had with her stuff, I was quite encouraged. Since I will be moving my stuff back to my mom's house next weekend and I am uncertain of where I will end up after that, I thought I could get rid of some bulky items that wont be needed in the McLean house. My idea was to sell a couch, my dresser, my large TV, and some other small items. I was getting so excited about the whole thing when Rich politely said to me, "I hate to break it to you, but good luck selling stuff in State College when everyone else is moving out and trying to get rid of things." This didn't stop me from making several posts in an attempt to get rid of my things. After a frustrating week and a half of several emails and almost sales, I FINALLY was able to get my couch and dresser sold! The guy who bought my dresser literally said, "wow, this is the nicest dresser I have ever seen." It was pretty funny, but I guess it is nice for a used college student's item. I have decided to maybe hold onto my TV, but I'm pretty pleased with the few things I did get rid of. So, the moral of this story is to be patient. Boy was I glad I posted my things three weeks before I actually needed to get rid of them! My next project is to pack...

Baby Aaron arrives a month early!

This past Wednesday morning, my sister and her husband Brett welcomed their second child into the world. I got a message from my sister late Tuesday night that she was having contractions and was headed to the hospital. Aaron was born about 3 hours later. I had asked my sister to call me after the c-section to let me know everything went fine. So my phone rang at 4am with good news. That morning I woke up and headed for Virginia for the day, but found out the bad news that Aaron had to go into the NICU because he was struggling to breathe. Luckily, by the time I got there he had improved a lot and was doing so much better. He was born at 3:13am at 6lbs 2ounces and 20 inches long. I was so glad that I got to make the trip down to Virginia and see the little guy. I have been speaking to Jill or Brett since then, and Aaron is getting better and better by the minute. I can't wait to go home soon and spend more time with my Sister and my two nephews!

For more pictures click here!

The Best/Worst Campsite

This past weekend, Rich and I decided to do an overnight backpacking adventure to get ready for our Outward Bound (more on this later) trip in September. We packed up our packs on thursday night and then as soon as Rich got home from work on Friday we headed for the Pennsylvania mountains. We Parked in the Allen Seager area in Rothrock State Forest and took off on a trail. After climbing a constant uphill for about 3 miles, we came to a sign that said part of the trail was closed due to hazardous conditions. At first we were thinking, "thanks for telling us now that we got all the way up here and it's already 8pm". But, we decided to just carry on with our adventure. About 10 feet up the trail from the sign, we came across a huge clearing that extended all across the part of the mountain we were on and also all the way up the next range we could see. This was not the most pleasing view after a couple hours of hiking with a 30 lb pack. It made us think about how humans ruin everything. But then we noticed a campsite that someone else had set up with a fire ring. With it getting a little dark, we decided this might be the perfect spot. It turned out to be the perfect place to camp, given that there was an abundant amount of firewood because of the big clearing. So, I set up the tent while Rich built a fire and collected wood. We then ate dinner, sat by the fire and went to bed. The next morning we had breakfast and hiked back down the mountain. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted but it was a fun trip. Ralphy also came with us and did such a good job. Since he is such a mama's boy, he doesn't need a leash and will follow along the whole way. He was so tired from the hike that he let us sleep in until 8am! I think he is still recovering.

Summer of weddings

From May to June, Rich and I attended two weddings. Even though this happened a while ago, I thought I would share some of the good times we had and some pictures.








First in May we attended Alex and Troy Goode's wedding in Herndon, VA. The Goode's are best friends of Jill and Brett and the god parents of Peter. When Alex and I worked together on Jill's wedding, we spent a lot of time together and in general I have just hung out with my sister's friends a lot so I knew it would be a blast and I was excited to get an invite. My mom and I had the duty of watching Peter during the whole thing, so that Jill (matron of honor) and Brett (groomsman) could follow through on their duties being in the wedding. The night was full of celebration, good food, and dancing. Peter was probably the most popular person at the wedding and his tuxedo was so cute! Since Rich doesn't dance, little Petey served as my dance partner most of the night. I always have a lot of fun hanging out with Jill and her friends and they make me feel so welcome in the group. All in all it was a great night!









About a month later, in June, Rich and I attended Jesse and Maria Leblanc's wedding in New Jersey. Jesse is a childhood friend of Rich and also lived in Tahoe during the same time as Rich. Jesse, Maria and Rich went on several adventures together while they were out west and Rich has many fond memories of the two of them. Since Rich served as the best man for the wedding, it was more of a wedding weekend than just one day. We spent the whole time hanging out with all of Rich's closest friends from growing up and it was really fun to see them all interact after being friends for so long. Since Rich was in the wedding and I was not I quickly befriended Steph, who is married to one of the other groomsmen. We spent a lot of time together over the weekend as our guys were doing groomsmen duties. We did get to ride in the wedding party limo, which was a lot of fun. It was definitely the biggest limo I had ever been in and we managed to squeeze in about 18 people. The weekend was full of tons of food, really good stories, and a lot of laughs. The funniest part of the weekend for me, was when Jesse started to ask me about tennis and quickly decided that given 12 weeks of training every day he would be able to beat me in a tennis match. After some skepticism from the crowd, he quickly rephrased his statement to "I could at least give you a good match". The only believer in Jesse, was Lucas, who decided that if Jesse could just switch to being lefty and play like Nadal then he could beat me. As embarrasing as it was for me to be talked about for a solid 30 minutes, it was pretty hilarious.

California is the best!

In case you didn't get my email about California and haven't seen the pictures, I'm posting it on here. I have been trying to increase my email address book, so don't be offended if you didn't get this the first time around.

I went to California with my boyfriend, Rich, in June. We took 8 days to explore the northern part of the state and visit some of our favorite spots. We started the trip by flying into Oakland and spending a day and a half in San Fransisco, then we drove down the coast and spent a night in Big Sur, then we drove over to Yosemite and spent a few days there, then up to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days and finally to Berkeley for the last night. We camped 6 of the 8 nights and did 25 miles of hiking throughout the week. To most people that might not sound like a vacation, but it was perfect for us. Although, we were quite tired and hiked out by the end of the trip. We reached 8,000 feet of elevation in hiking and about 10,000 feet during our driving, which also added to the exhaustion. I have attached some pictures to highlight the trip, but here is a little summary of each part in case you are interested.

San Fransisco: After spending Friday night in DC with my mom, we flew out early Saturday morning and got into Oakland around 10am. Once we got our rental car, which took way longer than it needed to, we were in serious need of some coffee. Being the coffee lovers that we are, we had done some research and found a few places we thought would be good. After some confusion and on place being closed, the Garmin got us to Ritual Coffee Roasters in the Mission (San Fransisco). Needless to say, we revisited this place two more times before leaving San Fransisco. It was delicious and the best Latte I have ever had. That was probably the highlight of our time in San Fran because the weather was pretty overcast, but we also went to fisherman's wharf for some clam chowder, took a long walk in golden gate park, visited the Point Bonita lighthouse, ate breakfast at the Bistro in the Cliff house (restaurant on the water and a historic building), and stayed in The Rainbow Room in a Bed and Breakfast and ate at Magnolias (a Rich favorite) in the Haight-Ashbury area. On Sunday afternoon, after we got a final coffee from Ritual Roasters, we headed for Big Sur.

Big Sur: We took a nice drive down to Big Sur via Highway 1, which featured some amazing views over very high cliffs. Despite my clinging to the car (heights freak me out a little), I was able to really appreciate what the road had to offer. We started our 6 days of camping there at the Pfieffer Big Sur State Park and then headed to Mcway Falls with just enough time to catch some pretty good pictures. After exploring the area, and the two most awesome campsites ever, we set up our tent, built a fire and roasted some marsh mellows. The next morning we did the TanBark hike to the Tin House. This was a strenuous hike that kept me wondering if the views would be worth it. Turned out they definitely were! The Tin House was pretty cool and the hike down offered awesome views and a great place for us to stop and have lunch. Then we left for Yosemite.

Yosemite National Park: The drive from Big Sur to Yosemite was the longest, so we broke it up just a little by stopping in Mariposa and staying in a KOA. The nest morning (my birthday) we woke up and headed into the valley. Since Rich worked there for a summer in 2001, we hadn't made reservations because he knew of Camp 4, which was a walk-in first come first serve site. After waiting in a long line, we were the lucky winners of campsite 35. The next two people in line got sites and then it was sold out...lucky us and happy birthday to me! We then decided, despite a nasty blister I had gotten from the day before, that we would do the Upper Yosemite Falls hike (a very strenuous, very rewarding, high elevation hike). The next day we took a break from hiking to let my blister have a break and drove up to Glacier point for some pictures and then Rafted down the Merced River. The next day it was already time to leave, but we did a morning hike up to Vernal Falls before leaving for Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe: On the way to Tahoe we stopped at Nicely's (a Rich favorite) and some hot springs (another Rich Favorite). Those who know about these, like to keep them a secret. All I will say about them is they are near Bridgeport, CA and they are awesome. We got back on the road and set up camp at Camp Richardson in Tahoe. We then drove to see the lake and got some pictures. We ate dinner that night at Divided Sky and I had the best salad I've pretty much ever had. There was supposed to be a live band, but after a couple hours of them not being able to get their sound system going, this tire duo left and went to bed. In the morning we ate at Rich's favorite coffee shop Alpen Sierra, just up the road from Harrah's where he use to work. We then did our final hike of the week and made it about 3 of the 5 miles up Mt. Tallac. We then pick nicked at Pope Beach and later met up with Rich's friends Kelly and Charles for some dinner. After that Rich and I went to the improv and had some pretty good laughs. We then spent our last night in the tent, got up the next morning for some pictures, breakfast and lunch at Sprouts (shocker...a Rich Favorite). Sprouts was the bomb and can join the ranks with Ritual Roasters. Then we took off for Berkeley and an actual bed with pillows!

Berkeley: The reason we spent the last night here is because Death Cab for Cutie was playing at the Greek Theater on campus and we both like the band. It was also a short drive to the airport from there. We stayed at the Hotel Durant, walked to dinner and then walked to the concert. It was a very good end to a great trip. Our flight ended up being delayed back into DC, so by the time we got to State College it was 2:30 am and we both had to get up early the next day to work. But, that was pretty much the only glitch in our trip so we aren't complaining. We probably also would have attempted more hiking if it weren't for my blister, but for the sake of our tired bodies it was probably for the best.

Here is the link to the rest of the pictures... http://community.webshots.com/user/kmb5166