Michael Visits!

Michael came to visit at the beginning of November. It was a lot of fun being a tourist around New York. We visited Ground Zero, Grand Central Station, the Empire State building, Grant's tomb, the UN building, the New York Public Library, Central Park, Belvedere Castle, The Met, and F.A.O. Schwartz among other places. Check facebook (soonish) for a lot more pictures. Soon to come are lots of Avery and Thanksgiving pictures. I hope you all are doing well. I will be done with class in exactly 2 weeks so I should somewhat get my life back at that point. I know these pictures are all over the place. I'm still not sure how to make they page look neat. Let me know if you have any suggestions =)

Autumn in New York

Hey everyone. I'm attempting to write a paper, but since I'm sick and exhausted, I decided to take a break to blog. I really need to be better about this. The past few weeks have been crazy, as always. Halloween was insane. I went with some friends to Greenwich Village for the parade. I have never seen so many interesting costumes in my life. I was one of the most conservatively dressed and I'm pretty sure I got a lot of attention solely for that reason. See those drag queens in the bottom left corner? Yeah. This was a direct quote: "Slutty Pocahontas...I love you!" Anyway, here are some of the costumes we saw. Unfortunately I did not get pictures of the really crazy ones. I was a little timid in taking pictures of people on such a crazy night.
Since it is nearly impossible to have a social life here, we have to improvise. a cool looking tree.Our favorite is walking around central park while studying for our Sunday tests. Central park is so beautiful, and such a contrast from the skyscrapers of New York. Here are pictures of the reservoir, random central park police vehicles, horses on the bridle path, and me with some friends around a cool looking tree.
One more highlight of October: we took a night tour on the Hudson River to see waterfalls on the Brooklyn bridge and randomly in the river. This was a really cool art exhibit that was up for about 6 months. Here are pictures from that trip. All right, well that's October. I'll put up what I have for November soon. I love you all!

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Happy Late Anniversary!

Mom and Dad, I am so sorry I missed your anniversary. I love you both so much and miss you a lot. I hope you are having a wonderful time at the beach. Take lots of pictures. This picture is from when Mom and Dad visited during the Italian festival in September. Again, happy anniversary. I love you!

The girl who cried wolf

I don't have much time (I have a paper due tomorrow, a lot to go, and I have to be up in less than 7 hours). However, I HAD to share that today I looked out the window and saw a giant wolf! Very bizarre. Needless to say, recess was inside today =) This is obviously not my picture, but it looked just like this one. And by the way, Dad now calls me "Little red riding hood." Oh, Vince.

The past week has been crazy (as usual) but awesome (as usual). Katie and Chris visited and we saw Spamalot, which was hilarious. We also met up with Olympia for a little while. It was so nice catching up and walking around New York with old friends =) Yesterday and today I had off for Rosh Hashanna. I have never been so ecstatic about Jewish holidays before. I also have next Thursday off for Yom Kippur! Several of the kids in my class are Jewish and were so cute in their excitement about the holidays. One even went to Jamaica! Currently I am doing research in my class on increasing approvals between peers. We are only in the first intervention phase right now, so we have a while to go, even though it is technically due on Tuesday. I can't remember if I blogged this already, but I definitely have "quizzes" (aka impossible tests on the whole unit) ever Sunday. Those are really not cool, especially because it is before we learn about the units in class.

Anyway, my blogs are so random. The past two days have been awesome because I have been able to do things I usually can't do because I am working, like going to the bank, the post office, and several school things. I also got caught up on some of my work, so my stress level is a little lower.

The first picture above is inside a reconstructed roman room at the Met (from about a month ago) and the one to the left is from my birthday. I'm hoping to put more pictures up on facebook or the blog soon, including apple picking with my class and pictures of my apartment. Thanks for reading! I hope everyone is doing well. I still care about all of you even though it may seem like I dropped off the face of the earth. I promise!

Life in New York is awesome. And crazy. The week before school and work started, I got to explore New York with new friends. We went to the Empire State building, saw Ground Zero, went shopping, went to happy hour in a bar near Times Square, explored the downtown night life and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We get into so many free museums with our ID's...it's amazing. However, now that school and work started, it barely feels like I live here. I wake up at six every morning and don't get back until 9 depending on if I have class. The work load is increadible. I mean, I feel more prepared than the average person because of wm, but it is almost unreal. There literally aren't enough hours in the day. I haven't been able to cook one time, and 7 hours is the most sleep I have gotten (and that is a great night!) Seriously, I never thought my life would be this hectic. However, I am learning an insane amount from this program. I am a TA in a fourth and fifth grade special education class. This basically means I work one-one-one with some kids but generally do a lot of data collecting, graphing, analyzing, and help with the implementation of educational and behavioral interventions. It has been very interesting and I love the kids.

I have never been surrounded by so many diverse people as I am now. The average age is 27, so most people bring a lot more interesting/cooler/different experiences to the table than I do. It is awesome just listening to their stories.

Last weekend Miguel visited and we went to see a Yankees game, had dinner in Little Italy, and met Jed (from wm) for drinks in the East Villiage. This weekend mom and dad came for my birthday and we also went to little Italy for the San Gennero festival. There are always a million and one things going on in New York...I love it!

Thank you to everyone who called me for my birthday. I am so sorry about how bad I am at returning calls. I am going to try to take study breaks tomorrow and call everyone back, but I have a test at 5 (which I do every week- which sucks). I love and miss you all. I promise I haven't forgotten about you!

Northern Virginia, Avery, and Lake George

Thursday evening I headed up to NOVA to have dinner with Katie, Ashley, Kayla, and Stina. I'm so glad you guys could meet me =) We went to T.G.I. Friday's at Tysons. I was really excited about my chicken parmesan sliders, but they brought me cheeseburger sliders instead. When I didn't get my meal until everyone else was almost done eating, I didn't even get a discount! But, since I am non-confrontational, I didn't say anything. I loved seeing the girls and definitely want to make a DC trip sometime soon. (And everyone is always welcome in nyc!)
This week has been crazy with trying to get everything done before I move. I have an extremely long to-do list ranging from going to DMV to switch my license plates (to keep NYANKS2 on the jeep) to getting a head start on Christmas presents (Rach yours is wrapped and on my shelf!).

In between all the craziness I got to spend some time with Mary Grace...she is moving to North Carolina to be an RUF intern at Davidson. I know she will be awesome =). Mom and I have also babysat Avery a few times to allow Sarah to get some things done and have a break. Vinny and Sarah are such awesome parents. You would never know it is their first time. Mom and I have also been trying to get Avery to take a bottle, extremely unsuccessfully. She knows what she wants! Here is a short video of a Michael Jackson impression. Hopefully later I can capture "baby got back" and "thriller" on video if I can sneak it in without Vinny seeing.

Last week at Lage George was awesome. We renteda boat from our favorite marina and got up before sunrise four days in a row to fish all day. Although the fising was not as great as usual, we still managed to catch enough for a fish fry for 7 people with catfish, small mouth bass, rock bass, and blue gills. Plus, we had a new addition to our trip this year...As an early birthday present, Mom and got dad a Fish TV. There is a camera that looks like a fish attached to a wire so you can literally watch all the fish. It was amazing! The fish actually swam right up to it and once we saw a fish take the bait on dad's pole. So cool. In this picture I am holding a rock bass. I will put more pictures up on facebook with other (bigger!) fish.

The last few weeks have been crazy (just like the rest of the summer!!) I went to New York and Connecticut two weekends ago for some family parties (9th grade and high school graduations). Last weekend we went to Ohio for the 4th because my dad was doing some of his car racing there anyway. Both trips were fun, although I am exhausted now. Work has been interesting as always. I ended up vomiting several mornings last week after attempting to take vitamins (it doesn't seem to matter if I take them before or after breakfast), and then went to school and cleaned up a massive amount of vomit from a sick student. It was a rather vomity day. Other than that, a bump on my head from a knuckle first punch, some pinches and slaps, work has been great. I promise I am not being sarcastic. I love the kids so much and we take fun field trips. Tomorrow we are going peach picking! Then I will be leaving right after school to drive up to nova for the rehearsal dinner. This weekend is going to be so much fun. I can't wait to see you girls! Here are some random pictures from the past couple weekends:

Playing pretty, pretty princess with Gianna, Alexa, Kristin, and Kimmy

Gansta

with

Rachel

and

Emily

Hard core camo

Jeep!

Well here is my new car...my beloved 2007 Jeep Compass. I love it! It is tan/gold, as you can see, has good gas mileage, and heated seats! I'm still getting used to being higher up, but even this SUV is significantly smaller than my boat the intrepid. Grandma is getting my car since she does not have ac and we are selling hers. This should be good for the city next year, although my dad said it is almost guaranteed people will hit my car by accident when I'm not there and not leave there number, so I can't worry about that. hmmm, I'm going to have to adjust to live in the big apple.

Father's Day

To preface this post, Aunt Rhonda, Mom, and Rachel, a few of my friends are now blogging too. I am by far the worst, but I am working on it...

Today was a very nice father's day. Vinny, Sarah, Avery, and Lady came over and I made blue cheese crusted filet minon with a merlot sauce. Avery is just the cutest little thing ever. I just can't get enough of her!

Yesterday Jennie and I went to Williamsburg to celebrate Maggie's birthday. Kayla and Liz were there too. We went to the Backfin for dinner and Alex was our server. You can see him at the bar "pouring a drink" behind the counter.

Road Trip Part 1

Here are some highlights of the first 5 days of our road trip. We saw the St. Louis Arch, the world's largest birdie, the world's largest prairie dog, the world's largest Van Gogh painting, a Colorado Rockies game, the Budweiser brewery, the Coors brewery, and the Dred Scott Courthouse during these 4 days! They were busy and awesome.

Inside the St. Louis Arch

We found a replica of our TJ statue from William & Mary!

The World's Largest Birdie!

Colorado Rockies game

Beautiful Colorado

Colorado Rockies

Colorado Rockies Baseball game

Red Rocks, Colorado

Red Rocks, CO! Beautiful...almost has a little Tuscany look!

Denver, Colorado

Arived on Thursday, May 15th and will stay a few days.

Thank goodness for some rest!

St. Louis, Missouri

Arrived late Tuesday, May 13th. Will stay until May 15th when we leave for Denver, CO.

Road Trip From Virginia to California

It's Graduation Time

We Made It!

King and Queens Ball

Me, Michael, Paul, and Sarah

Sarah, Kristin, Me, Janelle, and Martha

Last Mug Night

When Michael's best friend from home, Pete, came to visit we celebrated the last night at Mug Night.

Me, Kristin, Janelle and Sarah

Pete and Michael

Miguel, Pete and Dan

Mom's big day

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

I love you more than I can ever say.

Have a wonderful day!

Superbowl Sunday

GO GIANTS!

I made football cookies and a Giants field cake in preparation for a victory =)

Peroguie Day! With the instruction of Sarah, who studied in Poland, we made homemade peroguies. We made 2 kinds- potato and strawberry, both of which were delicious.

Sarah with the really tough and sticky dough

Janelle trying out the awesome Tater Mitts

Everyone helped with the filling...

And the finished product!