Merry Christmas :)

I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas, and enjoyed watching the Packers dominate tonight! Here are a few pictures from my break so far:

Rockefeller Center, surprise trip to NYC

Metropolitan Museum of Art (Main Entrance)

Duke, preventing me from folding my laundry

Sophie and Duke

Present from Mom and Dad- Pandora bracelet and crab charm from Maine

Duke's new bone (we had to take it away from him to get him to eat breakfast!)

New Year's Eve

The day started out terribly foggy, which made me worry about my friends who had plans to go out last night. I, however, was at my Grandpa's annual NYE party with my family.


Wouldn't you, if you knew this was going to be operating for a large chunk of the evening? It was quite a hit with everyone present.


Especially with the twins! I wish I had kept my camera on for another few minutes after this- Mikey had QUITE the impressive chocolate goatee.

Happy New Year everybody!

Holly Jolly Christmas

Thursday
Sophie didn't get home from college until Wednesday evening, so we had to wait to decorate the tree until Thursday when we were all home.


First we untangled the lights/ bothered dad while he tried to put the lights on the tree.


Then the fun part! Every Christmas, my Grandpa Bob has given me and my sisters a Christmas ornament, so we each have our own box full of decorations.


This was my very first Christmas ornament, and my all time favorite. I don't know why, I just really enjoy it :)

Christmas Eve
We spent Christmas Eve at my Grandpa Bob's house, with my Aunt Mary, Aunt Katie and Uncle Rob, and my cousins Liz and Pat. So it was a fairly small gathering this year, but it was kind of nice and relaxed. Dad made homemade chili for dinner, and Mom made homemade soup. And after dinner, we opened presents!


It was very fun. I got some sweet gift cards to Barnes and Noble and iTunes, and my Aunt Mary gave me the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which is REALLY cool.


Of course, there was quite the mess when we were done!

Christmas Day
We spent Christmas day at my Aunt Anne and Uncle Chris' house. They had a really delicious Christmas brunch for us, and we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas with W. He was so funny- he barely blinked at all, but he could hardly stay awake.


He spent the movie cuddling with Sophie, but he let me cuddle with Bumble and Kanga so I wouldn't be left out.


While he napped, Brenna tested out his new safari play set.


And I found the pickle!

I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday!

Early Mini-Christmas

Today we went to Dodgeville to have a kind of mini-Christmas get together at my grandma and grandpa's house.


Before dinner, we all sat around the tree for a bit, and mom and 3 of her sisters and Grandma opened their Christmas gift from Aunt Jill.


She made everyone aprons! Aren't they fun? And Grandma made a great dinner- my absolute favorite bean soup. Then we got brownie sundaes with homemade chocolate sauce and crunched up candy canes. Wonderfully delicious :)

Thanksgiving Break

First off, I am an incredibly lucky person. Oshkosh only had school Monday and Tuesday last week, and I don't have Tuesday classes this semester, so I got to go home Monday night. I had almost an entire week off, which is why this is only now being updated.

Monday
My Aunt Debbie and her two boys stayed at our house a couple of nights during break. Of course, the boys are too old now to be excited when Sophie or I come home. I was greeted by this:


Hey, at least they could look away from the computer screens for a minute, right?

Tuesday
I was going to get a picture at lunch, since Aunt Debbie, my cousins and I met Grandma Joyce, but I was smart and forgot my camera at home.


This is not my grandma. Or any of my relatives. Or even lunch. This is Trooper, making weird dog eyes at me.

Wednesday
Pie! Glorious apple pie! Aunt Debbie made both an apple and a blueberry pie for Thanksgiving. I helped make the apple pie.


And by helped, I mean I ate pie crust dough, pie crust cookies, and cinnamon apples before they got stuck in the pie. Here's the apple pie, right before it got popped in the oven.

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving lunch was at my Aunt Anne and Uncle Chris' house, and was absolutely delicious. Of course, I took a TON of pictures, but since I don't want this to be a longer post than it already will be...


The grown-up (and W) table, where I was not seated. Oh well. I got to sit by W later, when we had pie :)


And then my camera battery died. Lovely. Skipping ahead to Saturday...

Saturday
I am not a Black Friday shopper. I think people are crazy. (You don't? Check out this crazy Menards lady and tell me otherwise. Just a heads up, there are quite a few profanities.) I do, however, enjoy a good sale. Like when the shiny 8GB SD card I want for my camera is on sale for $15, AND I happen to have a $15 Best Buy Rewards card.


$1.77 for a card that usually costs $39.99? Heck yeah! 4x the storage space as the card I have now? Even better!

Sunday
Sunday? Not as exciting as Saturday. I opened the fridge to put my just opened and snacked on salsa in, and guess what I found?


Food! My roommate's leftovers from before break! Do you have any idea how nasty those buffalo wings probably are by now? Ew!

Monday
Ok, I promise this is the last picture of Philip's new leaf thing. But look at how much bigger it got while I was gone!


Personally, I'm still in shock that it's still alive, let alone growing.

Goodbye, Bones!

Yesterday
Meet Bones. My roommate found him at the Dollar Tree and thought he'd make a good door dec for Halloween. Apparently the girls on our floor thought he needed some cash.


The CAs, however, thought Bones was a policy violation- he's covering both our room number and our spy hole. Since Halloween is over, I don't mind seeing him go.

Today
On campus, we have these things called TitanDollars- a campus currency that we can use at the Union, in vending machines, for laundry, at the bookstore, etc. It's been cold lately, and today it actually snowed a bit. Just a little. And none has stuck so far (for which I am INCREDIBLY thankful). So because it's been cold and it's now starting to snow, I ventured into the bookstore to see if I could find some mittens.


And I did find mittens. But even better than mittens- I found mittens that are also fingerless gloves! So I can still do things like unlock doors and unzip my backpack to get my keys while still being really warm (50/50 cotton/wool blend ftw)! Even more exciting! These are fair trade mitten/gloves, knit by women in Ecuador. Did you know that UW Oshkosh was the first fair trade university in the nation? (article here) It's just one of the things we do to be a more sustainable campus :)

Happy November!

Happy November, everyone! I can honestly say that even though I live in WI and really dislike cold and snow and winter, I've been looking forward to November all year. Can you spot the reasons why?


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! I love the Harry Potter books, and I like the movies quite a bit, too. This one looks epic. In case you've somehow missed out on it. Also, Thanksgiving. Not only do I get a break from school, but it also has by far the best food from any holiday.

Anyway, while thinking for a picture for today, I realized that I'm about a month behind on some fun news. It would seem that Jon and I have been together for a little bit over a year (says our friends. apparently we're both really bad at remembering these things).


So he adopted a koala for me through the World Wildlife Foundation (now that I think about it, this may be why I was sent that adventure magazine). WWF sent me an adoption certificate, a picture of the real koala in Australia, and a cuddly stuffed koala. I thought it was pretty sweet :)

Now get out and vote!

Halloween Weekend

Thursday
Friday night, my friends Ben and Andy were having a Halloween party at their apartment. Thursday, then, was Halloween prep. I made sure I had all of the pieces for my costume (my goal, which I met, was to assemble a Halloween costume fitting our mini-theme and to spend less than $20), and painted my nails.


Can you guess the theme?

Friday
Party! Although you would never have know if you saw what Ben spent most of the night doing.


Yes. He spent the night knitting. He says it's to surprise his sister with for the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows later this month. I thought it was pretty cool, although not part of the previously-agreed upon theme.


Kristen and Molly dressed out of theme as well, but Kristen HAD to be crayon when she saw the costume. And I really have to applaud them for ignoring the sexy crayon outfit. Sexy crayon? Really?


Nananananananananana BATMAN! Originally we had more villains in the group- we were also supposed to have a Riddler, Bane, Scarecrow, and Penguin as well. Sadly, Bane had to work and the rest were busy.

Saturday
Let me just say, there is nothing is more fun than getting things in the mail. Especially at school. So I was really excited when I checked my email on Saturday and saw that I had a package, and to please come to the front desk with my ID to check it out. I wasn't expecting anything, and I didn't know what it was when I picked it up. It felt like a book maybe.


I was not expecting this. Especially because I'm not overly outdoorsy. And because I'm a college student and therefore can't afford an almost $10,000 trip to China to play with pandas. I did flip through it, though, and it actually sounds pretty cool. I guess this company, Natural Habitat Adventures, does safari-like expeditions in more remote (less touristy) areas. They're really eco-friendly and are partnered with the World Wildlife Foundation. So I guess if I happen to win the lottery, I would probably want to do something like this. The trips look pretty amazing, and even the tents sound pretty nice (one of the Africa trips boasts "spacious walk-in tents with full beds with linens, en suite bathrooms, hanging wardrobes, interior tables and private verandas").

Sunday
Late September/ early October was really busy for USRH- we were working on School of the Year and Advisor of the Year bids to present at a regional conference (which would then move on to national). Our bid for SOY will be heard at a conference this weekend, actually. Anyway, along with something like 15 other USRHers, I helped get the bid ready. When I woke up Sunday morning, I found an envelope with my name taped to the door.


I found this inside, a nice little thank you from one of the exec board members for helping out. Apparently she spent Saturday afternoon making these cards for everyone who helped on the bids. It was a nice way to start of the day- a little reminder that our hard work will finally pay off soon :)

I am a slacker.

Terribly sorry. Here are the pictures I haven't posted yet, including today's.

Wednesday
Shep, my elephant/pillow on guard duty.


Thursday
Soph and Bren had fun chilling in Bren's room for awhile after dinner. Dork and dorkier? lol, at least they were having fun :)


Probably they were saving woobies. You can find the game here :)

Friday
My grandma brought doughnuts over from the good bakery where she lives! AND W came over! It was def. a good day. Here's a shot of W playing with Soph and Bren.


His favorite new phrase of the day? "Trooper come here?"

Saturday
Saturday was a Farmer's Market day. We got some good snacks (bison jerky) and some potatoes to make with dinner on the 4th. We also found this guy sitting on top of one of the buildings. I'm not sure that I've ever noticed him before, but it seems kind of hard to miss now.


Sunday
What did we do on the 4th of July? Not go to fireworks. It was too drizzly. Instead, we took the shaggy puppy to get groomed.


He loooooves the car. And taking up Soph's entire seat.

Monday
My parents gave me my birthday present early this year, and it.was.AWESOME!


YAY!

Father's Day

To celebrate Father's Day yesterday, my family met some of our relatives for brunch, went to a rose show at Olbrich Gardens, and then met some more relatives for dinner. All in all, it was pretty fun, and we had a lot of family time.


The picture, of course, is from the rose show. I had wanted to get a picture of the whole room, but I didn't want to disturb everyone else while they browsed. This particular rose, as you can see from the bit of red ribbon in the corner, won second place in one of the competitions (the aptly named, "Rose in a Bowl" from one of their challenge classes).

Memorial Day Weekend

Since today is Memorial Day, there was no school, and I had a lovely three day weekend. Better news: four more days until I'm off for summer. So here's how the weekend went:

Friday
I have been looking and looking for the bunny pictures from before, but I think they just disappeared or something. So in lieu of bunnies, I found one bunny on Friday:


Sadly, this picture isn't nearly as good as the last one :(

Saturday
Saturday was my cousin W's second birthday party. The theme was Sesame Street (or, as W calls is, "Sunny Day"), which called for a fabulous Elmo cake:


W could barely keep his hands off of it while we waited for the cake to be cut:



Sunday
Sunday we hung out at home. The plan had been to go to State Street, but since it was 90ish degrees, we decided that staying inside was a better idea. It gave Jon some time to investigate the inside of his computer (it's been overheating recently). Taking it apart:


What I found interesting:


Computers nom too!

Mother's Day Weekend

First off, there's no Friday post because I was sick. So moving on to the weekend...

Saturday
Since it was Mother's Day weekend, my sister Sophie, Jon, and I all came home from school. Mom made us a REALLY good breakfast on Saturday: carmel sticky rolls and an egg/hashbrown/ham/cheese dish. Then we went to the Farmer's Market, which was fun but kinda cold. Of course, I somehow forgot to bring my camera. All is well though, since I got a picture of Sophie before we left:


Yes, she let me take this picture. And yes, she told me I could post it.

Sunday
Sunday was Mother's Day of course, but since all of the Mother's Day pictures were taken during breakfast, they're not getting posted. Everyone is chewing in them and it just looks funny. So around 10:30 last night, Jon and I went to visit Ben in the arts and communication building, where he's been slaving away all weekend. This is what he's accomplished:


Just kidding. He had done a bunch of stuff for his screen printing class and was just starting this for an oil painting class. Plus there was a mess of freshly painted watercolors on his bed when we stopped by the room. I think art classes probably aren't something you should procrastinate in...