warning: not a happy topic, but keep reading.

A friend had posted a link on facebook to a blog post about "What you can do to help a grieving family." The blogger, a mother who lost her son in a tragic accident this past September, posted this wonderful list of things to do or say. Most of us are paralyzed in these interactions, not wanting to upset someone who is grieving.

On Christmas Eve 2011, I woke up and found myself going through old emails--the ones that I had from when Meghan, my classmate and friend from my study abroad program, was killed in a bus accident in Peru. I had written about her, on the fourth anniversary of her death, in my old blog. The group of us had put together a memory book that summer (and through the fall and winter), which traveled around the world, collecting stories and photographs from the 14 of us, which was hand-delivered by one of our group to Meghan's parents in March of the following year. Meghan's parents had asked us to write, and I never felt I was close enough to her, or I didn't want to upset them. 

But for some reason, I felt compelled to write to them on Christmas Eve. I wanted to tell them about all of the times that I've thought about Meghan over the past 5 1/2 years. She loved monkeys, so when I went to Africa, I naturally thought about her. She was one of the reasons I wanted to get a DSLR to take photos (which is now one of my favorite things to do). I shared with them the things I have wanted to share with Meghan. I shared with them what her death has meant to me. I offered to send them an email she had sent to us just hours before she was gone.

I have not heard back from them, and for a time I've regretted it. Until I read this post from Anna at An Inch of Gray. The only regret I have is not sending the email sooner.

I feel I've been surrounded by so much loss in my short life that I need to be better prepared for dealing with this. I hate being at funeral homes, and I've been spending a lot of time there recently, after losing Uncle Ken and Poppa in the past few months. And we're just a few weeks away from 10 years without Uncle Parkie. (I was not able to write that without getting a huge pit in my throat and starting to cry).

With my upcoming wedding, I've been thinking about ways to honor family members mentioned, especially because their absence will be very noticeable because of how fresh some of this is. I have seen calla lilies on the alter during the ceremony for those no longer with us. And Pinterest gave me this idea:

source

but the number of pictures I would have to have, just for my family would take over my bouquet (I'm at 8, just out of grandparents, and aunts/uncles). So I'm working on something else. I'm hoping with my renewed sense of how to help those grieving (myself included), that a remembrance gesture like this would be well-received.

Thanks for reading and putting up with this. I feel that the tips on what to do and say are helpful for all, so I just needed to share (and then my heart takes over and the above mess is what results).

Have you seen other ways to remember loved ones at a wedding?

random tuesday thoughts: helicopter parents

i was reading an article entitled "3 things you should never do for your child." now, i don't have any children, so this may seem odd for me to read. but i like to be prepared about these things.

but as i started reading the origination of "helicopter parent," i realize that by their definition, my parents were helicopter parents. i never felt this was the case, as i think my parents did a good job of supporting me, but keeping a respectful distance. they came to my tennis matches, softball games, and orchestra concerts, but they didn't insist that i play in every game (ever), and they didn't sit outside the door for every rehearsal. actually, given the choice, my mom would have waited in the car during all of my viola lessons, and never pressed me to give all the details afterwards. they wanted to be involved, but they wanted to give me a chance to grow up. 

but apparently the term "helicopter parent" came from parents who 'sweep in to rescue their children from the perils of higher education.' there are two such instances where this was the case for me.

credit

case #1. april, my freshman year. my parents and my aunt were coming up to visit for easter, and at 5am, i woke up to my roommate having vomited all over the floor, herself, books, etc. and she was naked in our room [she often was drunk, and was quite a disturbance for my academic pursuits, stole things from me, etc.]. i had a midterm exam that morning at 9am, and another class at 11am. my parents were to arrive around noon. and now my room was overwhelmed with the smell of vomit. 

i begged my roommate to help me clean it up (she didn't), but another girl on the hall did help. the room still reeked, as many of her belongings still had vomit on them. i got back from my first class, asked her if she would please clean the room up as my parents were going to be there in less than 2 hours. she cursed at me and rolled over in her bed. i was furious. 

i told my parents what was going on, and we went up to my room when the arrived. i had no idea what condition it would be in, but surprisingly it was as cleaned up as it could be and my roommate was MIA. the room still smelled gross. my parents pushed me to talk to the Residence Life staff (my RA was constantly MIA, so she was no help). usually if one roommate has an issue with the other, the plaintiff is the one to move rooms. It was April. I didn't want to get a new roommate somewhere else on campus for the last month of the semester. With my parents there to push, and my roommate's previous alcohol infractions in the dorm, she was required to move out that night. [i was an RA for two years in the same building, and i have never heard of another situation like this or even close to it, and most of the upper level ResLife staff hadn't either.]




case #2. november, my junior year. when i declared my major during my 1st semester of my freshman year, i was informed of what classes i had to take, among them were two math classes: Calc 1 and Calc 2. In the midst of me taking (and doing very poorly in) Calc 2, I was informed that that curriculum hadn't been approved yet, and since I declared before the approval, I needed to take Calc 1, and Stats/Probability. No Calc 2--good thing, because I got a C- in Calc 2, which means I would have had to take it over again. So I took Stats/Prob and got an A during the spring of my sophomore year. So we were good to go.


Then I was going to apply to the combined BA/MA program during my junior year. The new curriculum had been approved at this point, and anybody entering the BA/MA program would be on the new program (aka the Calc 2 route). I balked at this, and got everything approved by my department heads to be able to substitute Stats/Prob for Calc 2, so that I could just be on the new program to move forward with the Masters. I did everything I needed to so that there would be no problems when I went to the dean's office to change the curriculum. all on my own.


They had instituted this new online curriculum check-off system that put the required classes in, and they were checked off when you completed the class with a sufficient grade (C or above). They would use this to determine if you were eligible for graduation when the time came. I went to the dean's office, explained my case, provided all the appropriate documentation, and they said no problem. When the online system was updated, it didn't reflect that substitution. I went back to the dean's office, and they told me that I couldn't substitute a class (Stats/Prob) for a required class that I had gotten an insufficient grade in (Calc 2). I continued to explain that the head of the department/director of undergraduate studies in the department (aka the one who signs off on the curriculum and my graduation paperwork) had signed off on it, fully knowing that I had been jerked around curriculum-wise. They said there was nothing they could do, the system cannot be overridden in that case, and I would have to take Calc 2 over again.

No way. By this time, I was home for the weekend. I had to have knee surgery. I told my parents what was going on. I didn't want my parents to get involved, but I didn't want to take Calc 2 AGAIN even more. So, my dad sent an email to the same person I had been working with. I read it, it said nothing different than what I had already explained. By the following afternoon (when I got home from the hospital), they had suddenly found a way to override the system. I didn't have to take Calc 2 again. 


I spent weeks putting together my information, getting my ducks lined up, appropriate signatures, pleading my case. for nothing. My dad sent one email and it was fixed immediately. I mean, miraculously. 


---------
Both of these situations illustrate that having the one who pays the very expensive bill deal with a situation is necessary in some cases. These are the perils of higher education, not a mom advocating to a professor about why a college student should be allowed to re-take a test if he/she is sick (because that is wrong). If my parents hadn't stepped in, I would have had to move out because my roommate screwed me over. I would have had to take an extra class (over again, for no additional credit) that my department said i wouldn't have to (and he had SIGNED off on!). That could have hurt my ability to complete the BA/MA program on time, or it could have prevented me from an important summer internship to take it as a summer class. If that was the case, I probably would have taken the class in Summer 2006. And i would have missed out on the opportunity to meet the guy I'm going to marry this summer.


So if that means that my parents are 'helicopter parents,' i'm really happy about it. I don't think they fit in AT ALL with the current meaning of the phrase. because i do agree with the rest of that article-- you should not do your child's homework, you should not talk for them unless it's necessary, etc. 


what are your thoughts on helicopter parenting?

presentations & bicycle helmets, part 2

okay, so i know, i left you with a cliff-hanger yesterday with my random tuesday thought that turned terrifying. so we left off that my friend just went unconscious on the side of the Panamerican Highway in Ecuador. 


Okay, so panic sets in for all of us. We pull out our local cell phones, and call our professor (who was more like a parent) and our program director in ecuador. A few guys run down the street to a building where there may be people to get help. We try to flag down cars driving by. Most just think we're stupid gringos waving at them. One finally stops. We need to get her off of this 3 foot wide strip of grass between one of the busiest roads in South America and a huge cliff to the river down below. We use our broken panicked spanish. (good thing we've been living there for a few months already). They help us get her into their car. 


Shortly after this, an ambulance arrives. They can take her to the hospital. Two people from the group go with her. The rest of us are left. On the side of the road, with 3 extra bikes. I decide that's it. I never want to ride a bike again. All she did was hit the wall with her handlebars on the right side, and then landed on her left shoulder (& head--which could have been way worse had she not been wearing a helmet). And she was getting carted away to a small town hospital in a developing country. No way was I going to do the next 30 miles on a bike. So, a few of us grabbed the extra bikes, and waited for the next bus heading northbound. Some others continued on the trek, no hard feelings on either end for continuing or not. 


The bus came, the put our bikes on the top of the bus, charged us an arm and a leg ($1 per person + $7 a bike)--RIDICULOUS in Ecuadorian terms. For reference, a typical bus fare roughly equals $1 per hour on the road, so a roughly 3 hour trip would cost about $3. We had only had to go 6 miles! We were in shock about the incident, and just paid whatever they asked for. We cleaned ourselves up and the bus entered the town of Banos. We were about 2 blocks from our drop off point, when we heard a crash behind us. We looked back, and there was a bike, on the hood of the police car behind us. And two other bikes on the ground. They had gotten caught in the overhead wires. The bus driver called us, told us to get off, gave us the other bikes, and just drove away. We didn't realize how damaged the bikes were until he was long gone. [The police officer just drove off, unphased.] 


We brought the bikes back to the shop, the front wheels mangled on the bikes that fell. The woman started screaming at us [in Spanish], telling us we had to pay for new bikes - $200 each. We owed them $600. Everything is so cheap in Ecuador, we were staying here for 3 nights, eating food, and getting bus fare back to Quito--I only had $60 cash on me for all of that. 


We explained that the bus driver did not tie the bikes down like he was supposed to, and that he just drove off. In the small town, a witness to the bikes falling was able to identify the bus company and driver. We got back on the phone with our program director, as we got marched down the block to the bus company.


The bus company explained that the owner was poor, and that he had sick children, and he couldn't take care of them, so he couldn't pay for the bikes. The police, who were next to the bus company, said that we had to pay for them for the same reason. We were advised to have a mechanic look at the bikes to see how much it would cost to repair them, rather than replace the bikes.

We did that, and the cost was $20/bike. We scrounged the money together to give them, and just let that be that. We were completely taken advantage of twice that day, it shouldn't have been our responsibility to tie the bikes down. This is where I learned the word "culpa" in spanish (that means 'fault', as in whose fault is it?). 

My friend had broken her collarbone, and they put her in a weird cast. The hospital cost was less than $10, for x-rays, medication, and the cast. She took a taxi 3 hours back to Quito, where the doctor there put her in another cast. It made for a rough last month of the semester abroad for her, but at least she was able to stay. It was a scary ordeal, but its one that I will definitely share with my children when they tell me they don't want to wear a bike helmet anymore, because it could have been so much worse.

random tuesday thought: presentations & bicycle helmets

sometimes, these random thoughts come over me. and tuesday seemed like a good day for that. and apparently, a lot of other people think so, as it's a tuesday blog theme, started by The Un Mom (this is not a blog I often read, i just wondered if anybody else had random thoughts on tuesdays). but hey, it seems like a good idea. because sometimes these random thoughts are interesting memories that are somewhere in the back of my brain, and that maybe someday i'd like to remember or share. so don't feel obligated to read the randomness, if you're not interested. [i do realize my train of thought may be difficult to follow, but i promise it will all come together in the end]

so today i'm giving a presentation on 'time management and project planning.' two separate, but related topics. my audience is americorps program members for the program i was in 3 years ago. why they think i am qualified after 2.5 years of working in the workplace to give this presentation, i'm not sure.

but this all reminded me of the 'persuasive speech' i had to give in my 10th grade language arts class (side note: this was also the same class that i wrote a paper on multiple personality disorder). for some reason, i had no idea what to write/speak about, and my parents gave me an idea. i think i was too lazy to think of something else, so i was the 15-yeard old persuading my classmates that they should wear a helmet when riding their bikes. really cool, i know.

my dad even gave me the idea of bringing in a hard-boiled egg, and smashing it against the chalkboard during an especially intense point during my speech (the egg smashing went horribly awry and it ended up skidding across the chalk board and not even really cracking when it hit the floor). 


but i realize now, 11 years later, that i would persuade my peers today even more to wear a helmet when riding their bicycles. in that short time, i hear too much about people on city streets getting hit by cars (i lived in boston for 5 years, and i certainly was not going to ride a bike there), knowing people that have wiped out on a bike (someone who i used to work with recently fell on his bike and broke his hip), and one of the most terrifying experiences of my life revolved around a bicycle accident. [this is kind of a long story, so it may have to go over a couple installments]


back in 2006, when i was in ecuador, my friends/classmates decided during our trip to Banos, that we would bike down the Panamerican Highway. This is such a popular trip that many places in Banos offer rental bikes to make the 60 km (~37 mile) trip to Puyo. [side note: why did i think i could bike 37 miles in one day? and this was about 5 months after i had knee surgery]  when we started, the place we rented the bikes from said we could take helmets if we wanted, but said we didn't have to. we took helmets. they also instructed us that we could go around all of the tunnels except for the first one, which we would have to go through.


we got started, it was pretty intense downhill. my hands were clamped lightly on the brakes the whole time it seemed. it was beautiful. 

we got to the first tunnel. we could see the light on the other side. the Panamerican Highway is pretty busy, being one of the best maintained roads, and a major artery linking the highland cities of Ecuador and many South American countries. We waited for a break in traffic so that we wouldn't have a car or bus or truck coming up behind us while we went through this tunnel.


A truck entered the tunnel, and it looked pretty clear (there were two one-way tunnels, so we weren't going to encounter any on-coming traffic). I was the 3rd person in the group to enter the tunnel. It didn't look that long, but once we were in it, it was clear it was a pretty long tunnel. At one point, the truck blocked the exit of the tunnel, and it was pitch black in the tunnel. I was going too fast, and I didn't feel like I had control of my bike, and i heard a bump and a crash right behind me. I couldn't stop (the truck had exited, so I could see again), and i was close to the exit of the tunnel. We made it out and stopped on the other side.


My friend was walking her bike out, and I could just hear her saying "I'm fine.  I just have to get out of this tunnel." She was walking, that had to be a good sign. When she and the others emerged from the tunnel (all of the rest of them were walking), she said she just wanted to sit down. She sat down on the small strip of grass. We asked her if she was hurt, and she pointed to the spot between her neck and her shoulder. Another friend, pulled down her shirt collar, and it was apparent she was not okay. A huge lump had formed next to her neck, and it was black and blue. She tried to take her helmet off, we helped her. There was a huge skid mark on the side from where her head hit the pavement. She said she didn't feel good, turned pale white, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she went unconscious.

so long 2011, hello 2012!

2011 was by far dominated by ups and downs. i started off the new years with andy's family out in northwestern PA, while my parents packed up the home they had lived in for my whole life and moved to texas. andy and i had started looking at houses in late 2010, and we spent all of 2011 continuing to live in our rented 1890s farmhouse. 

we had some adventures:

Texas (San Antonio & Houston)

Promised Land State Park (PA)

lots of kayaking

river safety patrol

Madison, Wisconsin

Siesta Key, Florida

 We reached some milestones:

100,000 miles on the Echo.

and a car with 7 miles on it.

 We had some setbacks:

my poor echo

a basement full of water

We spent some time with family and lost some family.

I took up a new form of exercise (hot yoga!!).


I had some major work projects come together, ones that i put together all on my own and saw them through to completion. [hey, maybe a promotion in 2012?]


and of course, the most exciting news of all- we got engaged!

maybe you can't tell it from my face, but at this point, i'm still in disbelief.

the last two months of 2011 flew past as we set a wedding date, picked a place for the ceremony/reception, booked a band, ceremony musicians, a photographer, and i bought the dress! 


we spent thanksgiving with andy's family, and christmas with my family (almost all of them!)

just the grandkids (mom's side)

dad's side (minus 3)

earthquake, hurricanes, snowstorms in october... all in all, i'd have to say 2012 was good, even with the pretty rough patch in the middle there. hopefully 2012 will be good all around. i have a feeling that august 18, 2012 will be an especially good day! :)

happy new years!

quick holiday recap and rant

i hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! i was able to spend time with andy and my family this year for christmas. we bounced around from place to place over three days, stayed at a hotel with my parents (even though this was just over an hour from where we live, but all the driving back and forth for 3 days would have been a little crazy and exhausting). it was good to be with family, but it was a sad christmas too. this was our first christmas without poppa, but they still wanted to have it at the house, and as somebody pointed out, that's the only place we've all known for christmas morning for our whole lives (aside from the one year we had it elsewhere when grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer). and this would be the last year we would have it there. so it was a bittersweet day. i do have to realize that i'm pretty lucky and that each christmas that i spend with my family, i do (usually) get to see every single one of my aunts and uncles and first cousins. not a lot of people can say that, so its nice that we can usually catch up at least once a year.

andy started with a cold on the eve of christmas eve. i managed to try to avoid him until he gave me an adorable card for christmas and i had to give him just one kiss on the lips. and then of course, the following evening, i started feeling sick. i can't blame it all on him, because my mom was sick too, and then my dad got it, so it was just a matter of time.

our last holiday event was monday, and then when we got home it was really starting to hit me. i woke up and felt awful on tuesday morning and called out of work. i had a meeting on wednesday that was related to probably the most important project of my career so far. i told my boss i would meet him for the meeting and that's probably all i would work on wednesday. i did make the meeting, even though i felt worse on wednesday than i did on tuesday. i've been going to bed at around 8:30pm every night i've been sick, and just spending all day in bed. aside from our appointment to look at two townhouses on tuesday and to take my mom to visit my dress today.

[here's the rant part] but i have to head in to work tomorrow because if i call out sick tomorrow (the last work day before a holiday), i won't get paid for the holiday on monday. regardless of the fact that i've been sick for three days, with an obviously contagious head cold. so, i'll drag my sorry, sneezy butt out of bed tomorrow morning, and potentially contaminate my officemates. sorry, co-workers, but i'm not going to not get paid. i at least only have to work 6 hours because i've pushed off my two hours left of vacation that i have to use this year until tomorrow (i was going to use it this week for some of the other errands, but now i've been sick). ugh, such a stupid rule. i totally understand that people will take advantage and try to extend their long weekend by being "sick" but obviously that's not the case here. so just sucks for me.

anyway, hope you all have a wonderful new year's celebration--i have a feeling that it will be pretty low-key for us sickly folk. hope you all have a wonderful 2012!

life update--including that i found THE DRESS!

so, i know. i haven't been writing very often. and that's because things have been crazy. between vacation and holidays and wedding planning and that other thing--oh yeah, work, i just haven't gotten around to it. or cleaning my house (which is a whole other story).

after we got back from florida, we went back to work for a couple of days, and then we headed off to visit andy's family for the thanksgiving holiday. we went out for a whole week, because andy really misses hunting. well, and he sure got to go hunting a lot. he shot a turkey on thanksgiving morning, and he got an 8-point buck. he got to spend a lot of time with his dad, which made him really happy. i spent my time doing wedding planning online, spending a lot of time on pinterest, and even getting some time in at the local Y out there (yay for the Y AWAY program!)

when we got back, we decorated the house, and then a few days later, my mom, my sister and i met up with some old family friends and resurrected our formerly annual holiday cookie baking extravaganza. we used to eat raw cookie dough bake cookies from noon until 9pm. and i mean sugar, spritzer, choc chip, gingerbread, snickerdoodles, fudge, and everything. dozens of dozens of cookies. we didn't make nearly that many this year, now that we're older (i think the last time we did this was maybe 10 years ago?). but it was fun.

in wedding news, i have done a lot of dress shopping (which resulted in a lot of crying--mostly from stressing out), but i'm so glad that on the first day i was able to go with my mom (who lives in TX), my sister (who lives in PA), and my best friend/twin (who lives in SC).  mostly the morning after i thought i liked a dress, i woke up at 3am, panicked because i found a bazillion things wrong with the dress. i did find the right color/fabric dresses for my bmaids on the first day, although i didn't find my dress. on the same day of my first dress shopping adventure, we met with an invitations person, and got to check out another band. it was a good day, so i'm glad i've been able to get a lot done. and we LOVED the band! (we being: andy and i, my sister and her hubby, my mom, and twin--so happy i could have almost everybody there, just missing my dad). I'm so glad we were able to get that figured out and we're all set with the band. And the invitations I think will come along nicely!

after my first dress attempt, i had to head out to more stores. i made three appointments the next weekend, and twin was able to come with me and spend the night. i really liked this organza with fern design dress at david's bridal and i thought it fit my personality perfectly, it was just a little too much dress and train than i was looking for. although i didn't get a dress, i'm so happy twin was able to spend the night, and spend time with andy and i. andy even made waffles and mini omelets the next morning!

organza and fern dress by vera wang
this was not the dress i chose,
but still beautiful!

on sunday i had two more appointments scheduled with my sister. i liked the first place (some things were a bit too expensive), but i found a dress that made me look AMAZING. i liked some details of another dress, and they said since each dress is made to order, they can make it how i want it to be. i didn't want to commit to anything since i was thinking about the fern dress, and i knew we had another appointment. we went to lunch first, and i realized that the fern dress was really not what i wanted and that the amazing dress was what i had been looking for all along. the 2nd store was a DISASTER. both places said "bridal couture"--which i scoffed at, and my sister told me it didn't mean couture like i thought it did. but for this place, it did. nothing looked good, most dresses actually made me look like a house.

i had been so overwhelmed with how awesome i looked in the dress at the first place, that i forgot to picture myself walking down the aisle. we called them and asked if we could come back before they closed. i knew when i put it on that it felt so right. i was hesitant because i hadn't slept on it and it was more than i anticipated spending on a dress. but i was going to be so comfortable in it, and i wouldn't have been in any other dress. and it was going to be made custom for me. so we placed the order! and the more i sleep on it and think about it, i'm so glad that's the dress i chose.

so, we got our save the date proof--it looks ADORABLE. i still have a little shopping to do, although most of my shopping was done and wrapped before thanksgiving. which is a good thing since i really haven't had any weekends free since then. this weekend won't help: we're going to a wedding! [since i'm surely not wedding-ed out] the bride, andy and i were 3 out of the 4 interns the first summer at PEEC. it is crazy where life takes us in just a few years.

hopefully i can blog a little more frequently than once a month! just in case, happy holidays and a happy 2012!

(i have a feeling that 2012 is going to be a wonderful year! i can't believe this time next year i will be MARRIED.)

a little of this, a little of that

in case you're wondering where i ran off to, it was here:

 my home away from home, my parent's other home, in florida. pretty much one of the most awesome places on earth. we had perfect weather (low 80s and plentiful/abundant/radiant/etc sunshine--according to weather reports, every day).

andy and i spent 8 days down there, my mom was there the whole time, my dad there for a couple of days. we got to see my great aunt & uncle who are snow birds down there, and some awesome family friends. i enjoyed some delicious margaritas at various places (airplane margaritas are NOT recommended), while seated outside enjoying the summery atmosphere, even in November.

we got to see some awesome sunsets, like this one:

we nearly missed this one, but it was awesome that we caught it! (the huts are the lifeguard houses at our beach, the most awesome beach in the world, well, at least the US. yes, it's ranked the #1 beach in the America this year.)

we visited the sarasota chalk festival (and got to see some 3D chalk drawings)

terracotta army in legos!

viewing the above drawing from the opposite corner.

that's us. in this sea turtle-VW beetle-barrel full of something.

spent some time by the pool, on the beach, at the aquarium, at the botanical gardens, on our friend's boat, watched andy go fishing (see below), ate a bazillion calories worth of food at Ruth's Chris to celebrate our engagement with my parents (which was all so worth it), you know. vacation.

and in the midst of all of that, we got some tough news on the wedding planning front: our band backed out. they were supposed to be sending us the contract the next day (as they had confirmed availability nearly 2 weeks beforehand), and whatever. just really tough, because now we're 9 months out, and the good bands are already booked because people have longer engagements now and have been planning their wedding for 6 months already.

anyway, sorry for my rant. but the good news is, is that i feel more in love with andy than ever. i just can't wait to be married to him. it's a good thing we're not waiting until 2013. and there was something i saw on Pinterest (omg, just got introduced to this and it's AWESOME)--and my re-pin failed... but it was something to the effect of: a wedding isn't a performance, things may not go as planned, but as long as when the day ends you're married to the one you love, it was a success. and i'm going to try to really tell myself that over and over again. so if you see it on Pinterest, let me know. because i want it. thanks.

hope all is well!

poppa

i come from a big family. especially on my mom's side. my mom is one of 7 kids.

and from that, i am one of 21 grandkids on that side.

and yesterday, we lost my grandfather.

while i don't feel that i was ever particularly close with Poppa, i know he was always excited to see each and every one of us, and i loved knowing how excited he was to receive father's day cards from me (i think i was the only grandchild that send him one).

i'm glad that i got to speak with him last week to tell him the good news, and how excited he was. he always referred to Andy as my "friend," and asked me how Pennsylvania was. (everybody, aside from me, and one uncle/aunt, live in NJ, all about 1 hour apart--i only live an hour and change too).

this was expected and unexpected at the same time. Poppa would have been 92 in February. just over a month ago, he fell climbing the stairs to get to a party at my sister's condo (which is on the 2nd floor). he broke his hip, had to have surgery, was going through rehab, and was just about to get released to go to assisted living (he had lived on his own since my grandma passed away in May 2007).

and then he dislocated his new hip. and had to have surgery again. and it was a difficult road since then, but we all thought he'd be okay. and then he just slipped away with my mom by his side.

i'm sure when i talked with him last week, he was already thinking about dancing to "Unforgettable" at my wedding next summer, just like he did at my sister's. he absolutely loved that moment, and it was the point where my sister cried the most during the whole day.

he danced with all of his granddaughters at his 90th birthday party back in 2010.  to "Unforgettable."

i take solace in that he's where he's wanted to be for the past 4 years. 

we'll miss you Poppa. give Grandma a kiss for me.

just can't contain myself!

so, yesterday, andy and i had plans to go for a hike at one of our favorite places and hopefully catch some of the fall colors turning. we've been crossing paths a lot recently with work and other commitments, so i'm glad we had set aside the day to do something for ourselves, and enjoy the outdoors. and it ended out being a beautiful summer-like day.

so the day started off with sleeping in and some chocolate chip pancakes. we got our stuff together for the hike and headed up to the Delaware Water Gap. we were doing my favorite hike, a place that andy and i had hiked on our first unofficial date back in June 2006, as i call it (which was in the rains that led to the 2006 flood of the Delaware River).

about halfway up

so the hike up Mt. Tammany is really steep on the way up, and its been ages since we've hiked there (especially when we were well conditioned to hiking all summer). we made it to the top for the spectacular view, which is also a great lunch spot. unfortunately there were stink bugs all over the place that were attacking, so we got up to head down the mountain. Andy asked me if there was another higher spot that we could get another view from the top, and I said i didn't think so, but i climbed on top of a rock that put me higher than anything else. Andy noticed that my shoes were untied, and said he would tie them for me.

Once he finished tying, he reached into his left pocket, got down on one knee, and said, "Well, I think this is a good time to propose... that I would like to spend the rest of my life hiking with you."

And I think that I was just so shocked and speechless that I don't even know what happened next, and we were sitting on the rock and he was putting this GORGEOUS rock on my finger.

and then this:

 

so i wore the ring down the mountain, holding andy's hand nearly the whole way. it just seems so surreal! i can't believe this really happened! this has just been a special place for andy and i. and as he pointed out that the Delaware River is really something that has joined us for multiple reasons, even being the border line separating the two states that we've come from and we meet in the middle.

i love this ring!! (almost as much as i love andy!)

so, no we don't have a date yet, we've got a lot to figure out, so we're just enjoying being really happy right now.

still can't even believe this is real!!

Surived the storm, little delayed on posting.

I had high hopes to write a post last weekend about our trip to Madison, Wisconsin to see two friends of mine (from my study abroad program in Ecuador) get married. Well, there was a little hurricane that came through, and the time I had allotted for blogging was spent filling buckets with water to flush our toilets if we needed to for days, scrambling to get all of the laundry done, moving everything from my storage unit living room since we've gotten some water in there in the past, making sure that anything left in the basement would be okay if we got a lot of water, etc. 

And then since I didn't sleep Saturday night, I spent most of Sunday in bed trying to sleep. We didn't lose power at all, so I spent the night pumping out the basement every hour or so, and then checking on the places water has previously gotten in, and then whenever the motion light went on in the driveway as a result of tree branches swaying and setting it off, I was checking on my NEW CAR. You can hopefully understand the panic that was going on in my head, after a tree fell and totaled my car, and we had a flooded basement as a result of a plumbing leak, all completely un-storm-related in the past month and a half. Ironic? yes. PANIC?! no question about it.

You get the point.

So, needless to say, I did not get to fixing up my photos yet, nor have I gotten around to writing about any of it. I'm volunteering for Andy again this Saturday, so perhaps some other day on the long weekend I'll get around to it!

I hope you and all of your stuff survived the storm. We were very lucky. We only lost cable/internet/phone for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. I'm thanking my lucky stars, because I don't think I could have handled any additional catastrophes this summer (especially not if something happened to my new car).

the last shuttle

so, before i transitioned to this blog, i had written a blog entry about my trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston this January. my parents now live in Houston, so when we went to visit, it was only natural we headed there.  I dreamed of being an astronaut since I was 10 years old, which unfortunately didn't happen because of my disdain for physics and my propensity to motion sickness.

But today was the final shuttle liftoff. I suppose even if I had been a physics wiz and could ride roller coasters (or boats, cars, buses, etc) without getting sick, I wouldn't have been in the program long enough to be on the space shuttle. Maybe I would have just loved to have been in mission control. 

So although I'm at work today, I decided I had to watch the shuttle take-off live. This was an important moment in our history, the end of the space shuttle program, and I've never seen it happen in person, nor even over the internet or TV live, so it was high time (I missed the last one by 4 minutes!--which by the way is long enough for them to completely reach space). 

So if you missed it, and you want to see it, visit NASA TV. Awesome!

(oh, p.s. i do have a post coming about my 4th of july weekend, i just haven't gotten around to getting the pictures of my camera!)

5 years ago: the story of us.

5 years ago today, i met the love of my life. i've decided to share with you the story of how we met:


i was studying abroad in the spring of 2006. i had tried desperately to get an job lined up for the summer prior to departing for ecuador, and even arranged for an interview at the place that sparked my interest in the outdoors. the short version: lack of communication on their part and other things falling through and then it was the end of April and i had no job for my return to the US in mid-May.


my mom and i began a frantic internet search for job opportunities. i emailed several places, most of which didn't respond, one of which offered me a job for summer '07 (which i ended out taking), and one who responded right away. the one who responded right away is where i ended up. 


andy's side of things: andy was required to complete two internships as part of his bachelor's degree in environmental ed. his cousin had worked at this environmental ed center years ago and recommended it. andy didn't have any other ideas lined up, so he went with this option.


training started while i was still abroad, so i was late coming in. most everyone else arrived on saturday or sunday with training starting on monday. i was just returning to the US after 4.5 months on sunday, so i shipped out on wednesday morning.


i joined the group (andy and the other 2 interns) who was learning how to teach "canoeing" classes. i had extensive experience with teaching canoeing and andy had extensive boating classes during his associate's degree program, so when our boss began asking us questions, andy and i were the only two answering the questions. (i thought he was 16 when i first saw him. he was actually 21).


it must have been fate. it's possible we could have never met, or our paths could have crossed (the original job i interviewed for that year would have put me within the same park boundaries as the env. ed center, and i could have gone through team building training with andy).

i'm so happy that things worked out for us, even though i fought the idea of us being a couple. i had just come out of a rough break-up (from a long-distance relationship), and i knew that andy and i would be long distance once the summer finished. but for some reason, i just couldn't let him go. and 5 years later, here we are :)

here are some photos to take you down the memory lane of us.

(if you read my previous blog, many of these are the same, but they just represent us so well!)

(something i just noticed, the progression of andy's hair!)

2006

July 2006 - my 21st birthday. i think this is our first picture together...

July 2006 - our first picture as an official couple

October 2006 - Boston Harbor, Boston, MA

December 2006 - New Years Eve, PA

2007

January 2007 - me learning how to use a .22, PA

December 2007 - New Years Eve, PA

2008

April 2008 - Fallingwater, Mill Run, PA

May 2008 - my graduation, Boston, MA

June 2008 - Siesta Key, FL

July 2008 - Mt. Tammany, NJ

2009

July 2009 - my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner, NJ

October 2009 - Halloween, Siesta Key, FL

2010

July 2010 - Allegheny National Forest, PA

August 2010 - Dingmans Ferry, PA

September 2010 - Watkins Glen, NY

 2011

January 2011 - The Alamo, San Antonio, TX