Happy News and Sad News

First, for the Happy News:

The Phillies won the World Series!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a crazy game 5, spanning over 2 nights due to some ridiculous weather, but they pulled it off, giving Philadelphia their first sports championship in 25 years!! Needless to say, Philadelphia was a bit ridiculous Wednesday night judging from online photos and pics messages received from our friends who were there (sooo jealous!!) Here are a few stolen from websites and received on my phone:

William Penn is taller than all of the buildings in Philadelphia again. The curse is broken!

Ice sculpture in the VIP tent courtesy of Jay

Chickie & Pete's After Party

Broad & Chestnut courtesy of Sushil

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And now for the Sad News.

Pappy (my grandfather for those of you who don't know him) passed away Tuesday afternoon. He was 87 years old. He knew everyone and always had a great story for you whenever you saw him. We enjoyed some of the stories during our last trip home in September (including one about "Glow wood" and another about cutting open a big snake to find lots of little baby snakes inside). Pappy will be greatly missed and going home will not be the same without him there.

Wooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

What a fabulous Saturday for Pennsylvania sports!! (The ones that matter, anyway! ;) PSU, the Phillies, & the Flyers all won. And the Eagles beat the Falcons today!! Now, if only the Phillies can win Game 4 tonight this would be the greatest weekend in Pennsylvania sports history!! (And all while I’m living in Alabama….hmmmph!)

Tom and I had a good week. We managed to get through til the weekend. We spent all day Saturday trying to distract ourselves from the stress of Saturday night’s game by cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, and baking (okay, only I cooked and baked).

Saturday night we nervously watched Penn State win a tough one against OSU while looking for my parents on tv. In typical Dad form, we didn’t even know he was at the game until I get a pix message of him in the horseshoe!! After the win, we were able to breathe for a second and then we watched the rest of the Phillies game (thanks rain delay!) while looking for my Philly friends on tv.

Here are a couple pics my dad sent me from Columbus!

Rushing the field after the win!!

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaame Day!

What A Week!!

This week was crazy ridiculous for both me and Tom. I was just super busy at work staying very late every single day. Tom was in charge of Pathology Graduate Student Research Day and he was also presenting a poster, so he was in lab every day even later than I was at work. But it's all good because everything went well and we ended the week with a bang! Our friends Brian and Anne got married!

Thursday night the girls got together and went to the dueling piano bar for a little celebration

Friday evening was the Rehearsal and the Rehearsal Dinner at Surin. I've never eaten so much at Surin before in one sitting! The food was delicious, as always, and we really enjoyed being able to be a part of Brian and Anne's dinner (Tom was in the wedding).

Saturday was the actual wedding and it was a gorgeous fall day! Anne was a beautiful bride! The reception was at the Aldridge Botanical Gardens and we had a blast, dancing the night away and sipping (a little too much) wine! Tom and I decided to get a hotel room for the night so neither of us would have to drive home (we're so responsible!). By the time we got to the hotel, they had given away our room! So they "upgraded" us to the Wynfrey Hotel attached to the Galleria. And they paid for our room! :) We had a really great time and the wedding was a great end to our week! Hopefully this week will be a little more low key! Enjoy the photos!

Phillies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go Phillies!!!!!!! World Series bound baby!!!! Pictures stolen from ESPN, because obviously, I was not there.

Punkin' Chunkin'

Last fall when we went home for the PSU v. Temple game we met up with our friends Carrie and John for a fun night in Philly. Carrie and John are always full of great stories, so of course they didn't let us down when they told us about their most recent adventure.....a trip to the Annual Punkin' Chunkin' Contest in Delaware.

Apparently it's this weekend long "festival" where people build all kinds of contraptions and see who can throw their pumpkin the farthest.......oh, and consume insane amounts of beer. I wish that I had some of Carrie and John's photos to post....they had some gems. I highly recommend checking out the website (it even has a countdown until the first "chunk!") Here are some pictures that I "borrowed" from their website. If you haven't been to Punkin' Chunkin', you're missing out!!

Really?! A kid with a "Got Beer?" hat on???

Two out of three ain't bad......

Go State. Go Birds. Get your head in the game Phills!!!

This weekend went by way too fast, as most of them do. I worked at my second job Saturday. Tom ran in the Race for the Cure Saturday morning. I really wanted to participate but I had already signed up to work months and months ago and didn't realize the race was this weekend :( Saturday night we watched the Penn State game with a couple friends.



Sunday I bought a big candle.

We're looking forward to a fun week ahead. Next weekend is our friends wedding and the festivities begin Thursday night at my favorite, the dueling piano bar :D

Current Events

"What's worse, Auburn's offense, or the Economy?"

This was written on a sign I saw on College Gameday on Saturday. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now it's just kind of sad as the Dow keeps dropping and Tommy Tuberville fired Auburn's offensive coordinator this week. I'm not too stressed out about the economy (okay, I'm not stressed out at all) for several reasons:

1) From everything I read, the economy is not even close to as bad as it has been in the past 10-20 years, it's just being publicized more and the media is having a hayday making people freak out (can we say "Election" in less than 30 days?) I've heard more about the candidates plans for the "mortgage crisis" (aka when banks got greedy and sold subprime mortgages to broke people) than I have about healthcare or education or anything else I place higher value on.

2) I have more than 30 years until retirement so my 401K has plenty of time to recover...let's just hope this doesn't happen again right before I retire! That actually is the one thing I feel really bad about, is those who are close to retirement age and do not have 20-30 years to let their investments recover.

3) I'm actually thinking about putting more money in to my 401K and opening up a Roth IRA. From everything I've been reading, it makes more sense to buy stocks now because you can buy more of them for less money and then gain more in the long run as they appreciate.

One of the websites/blogs that I really enjoy reading is The Simple Dollar. I added it to my blogroll a few weeks ago but don't think I ever commented on it. The guy who writes it is actually only a couple of years older than me but I find his posts interesting and informative. Sometimes he takes things a little to the extreme (he makes his own laundry detergent!) but overall I enjoy it. He simplifies things that are intimidating to me (i.e. stock charts) and offers a lot of good suggestions about life stuff in general.

Have you ever seen the rain?

At a White Out in Happy Valley?

What's new?

This weekend was pretty fun. Friday night I ran some errands and then we just hung out and watched tv. Saturday we nervously watched Penn State beat Purdue, and someone got so angry that they hit the table and sent their plate flying onto the floor (luckily it was empty!). And by "someone" I mean "not me." ;) Saturday afternoon we went to our friends Anne and Brian's shower at our friends Tara and Wes's house. Some good times (and good stories) were shared by all. I didn't quite get any reactions to the real stories on camera, so this one was reenacted but it was actually pretty authentic and funny on it's own :)

Saturday night we went over to our new friends Marji and Jon's place for a little get together. We learned what a marshmallow gun is and Tom got to bond with their cats (one of their cats...hahaha, the first time he ever saw a dog he turned over on his side and puked.....hahahaha).

Today I broke down and bought a new pair of running shoes. I think that was part of my problem when I hurt my foot. The pair I had before were a good pair of shoes but they just weren't a good fit for me. So I went back to my old tried and true Saucony running shoes. Then I went for a run and my foot felt great....although it felt great when I was running 5 miles before I hurt it too....so we'll just have to wait and see I guess!

For dinner tonight I'm making stuffed pork chops - I got mad when I accidently cut through one of them >:o and honey roasted red potatoes. Everything is cooking now so I better go check on it! Overall it's been a great, relaxing weekend!

More pics from our trip home!

Sooo, I finally got our disposable camera pics developed. The prints turned out really good but the pics on the cd turned out horrible. Sorry they aren't such great quality! Here's a couple of little Anne Marie and from the Eagles game.