They Got 'Em!

THIS little girl:

Did THIS:

I was at the sink finishing a cup of tea, when I saw a streak out of the corner of my right eye, then heard a HUGE crash!  I looked over to the right, only to see three cats scattering in all directions...one of them flying off the kitchen table!

Here, little Miss Macy Moose, in one of her possessed states, catapulted up onto the table, slid across the smooth surface and proceeded to slam right into the napkin basket and salt & pepper shakers.  As fast as she got up there, she was gone just as fast!  The whole thing was over in seconds!

Football Eve!

Tonight starts a new era for Penn State football.  We'll never forget the old, but now we must move on :)  Tomorrow State plays their first game under new Head Coach Bill O'Brien.  They play Ohio University; kick-off is at noon.

(Unfortunately, Adam forgot about ordering season tickets the day the Juniors were allowed to order them on-line, so he'll probably try to get tickets to a few of the home games this season.)

Cuteness :)

And Another One....

Here's my latest baby cross stitch. These people just don't stop having babies ;)  I'm very pleased with how this one turned out!  I had it framed very differently than any of the others I've done.  I had it padded instead of having it double matted with glass.  And this one has a green wooden frame.  I'm giving it to my friend, Rachel, who used to work at our office, and she has a very country-ish home...I think this will be perfect on the baby's wall :)  I can't wait til she sees it!

**She doesn't do much on the computer, I think she knows I have a blog, but don't think she'd have a clue how to get to it.  And she doesn't do Facebook, so I think I'm safe that she won't see this until I get to go visit her and give it to her :)

Happy Birthday!

This chickie celebrated her 23rd birthday today :)  She got two 'out to eat' dinners...one on Friday night when we went out as a family before Adam went back to school...and then another tonight for her actual birthday.  Friday night we went to That's Amore in Bethlehem, which has quickly turned into one of our favorite restaurants.  It is owned by one of my patients who is a real sweetheart :)  We've been there at least half a dozen times since he opened about six months ago.  (And I'm going there again tomorrow night!)  Tonight, Alyssa couldn't decide where she wanted to go, but finally decided on Longhorn Steakhouse, which actually just opened yesterday between Nazareth and Easton on Rt. 248. Mom came along with us.  We were no sooner seated when one of the managers came over to us with one of their appetizers (deep fried onion petals), saying they had made this for another table and they had asked not to have sour cream drizzled over the top (which is how it comes) and the kitchen forgot.  When they realized that, they picked us and asked if we'd like the appetizer 'on the house.'  Well, of course, we weren't going to turn it down ;)  They were quite yummy!  As he was setting it on the table, I mentioned it was Alyssa's birthday, so this was perfect; the manager and the waitress wished her a Happy Birthday and went about their business.  Shortly after they gave us the check at the end of the meal, the waitress came up to Alyssa with a HUGE dessert plate wishing her a Happy Birthday.  It had THREE desserts on it: a slice of cheesecake, their molten lava cake and caramel apple goldrush.  It easily fed the four of us, and there was still some left over!!

I had planned on getting a snack this morning on my way into work to celebrate her birthday at work until she told me at the end of the day yesterday that she was stopping on her way home from work to get ingredients to make brownie cupcakes to bring in to work today.  That made my life easier!  She made two batches...one dark chocolate and one milk chocolate with peanut butter chips.  The pink ones had the PB chips in them, the green ones were the dark chocolate ones :)  These were two left over ones!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALYSSA!!

**Picture of Alyssa, courtesy of Kristin :)

We Are....

From The Morning Call earlier today:

Since the NCAA imposed its sanctions, O'Brien often has referenced the deeper meaning of this season. Players will wear blue ribbons on their helmets to support victims of child abuse, and O'Brien added names to the jerseys to recognize those players who stayed with the program post-sanctions.

"We definitely have a chance to make history here at Penn State," McGloin said. "We can help bring this great university back from the bottom, help put the university and Penn State nation back together. That definitely will be on our minds come September 1."

Added Urschel, "It's not a burden at all. It's a gift, to be honest. All we do is play football. There are a lot of better people who could represent Penn State. We've been blessed to be in the position to represent our university. We're trying to do the best we can to show the outside world how great a place Penn State is."

PENN STATE!

Start of Junior Year

This is the apartment building Adam will be in til next May.  The angle is terrible, but I was standing at the car guarding all his belongings while Kurt and the kids carried his things up to his apartment. It's about two blocks from campus.  He has four roommates, three of them are Northampton graduates and four out of the five of them are engineering majors.  Turns out Matt, who is in Adam's bedroom, has a brother James who graduated with Alyssa and was in band with her.

This is the living room.  The wall opposite the sofa will house THREE flat screen TV's!!  I think the plan is to mount them on the wall.  I don't know if they'll be watching the same thing, or Adam mentioned something about using headphones and they could all be watching something different!  Sheesh!  I had a little 13 inch TV when I was in nursing school...and was thrilled to have that!!

This is the view of the kitchen area.  The refrigerator has no bars across the shelves in the door, which pretty much makes those shelves useless!  And to top it off, there's only two shelves total in the main part of the fridge!  I believe one of the parents addressed that issue with the maintenance guy who came up at one point (that story to follow later....).  Hopefully they'll fix it for these guys.

This is the small balcony off the living room.  They are on the third floor.  That's Adam's bike; he's not sure what he's gonna ultimately do with it.  It'll be a pain to keep it there all year and have to take it up and down the stairs or the elevator every day.  Apparently there's one bike rack for the entire building and it's at the opposite end of the building and not in a very well lit area, so he's kind of reluctant to keep it there.

This is a view from the entrance of Adam and Matt's bedroom.  It's really small.  Adam's bed is in the foreground.  Off in the distance you can see the corner of the one desk in the room.   There's only one desk per bedroom.  Fortunately, Adam and Matt are alone in their room.  The other bedroom is the same size and there's THREE of them in it!  One of the beds is a bunk bed.

Please note the disgusting color coordination...blue bedspread....black sheets.  Alyssa is appalled at his choice in colors!  It was pretty comical at Target when they were looking at sheets to buy (Adam threw his sheets away in May when he came home...beings as how they'd never been washed, hence the reason for new ones!).  He picked the black sheets, before we knew it, Alyssa had snuck the black ones back on the shelf and threw a different color in the cart ;-)  Next, she tried to change out the bedspread, so it'd match the black sheets...LOL!  I don't think they really look all that bad :)  See that little space alongside his bed where the night stand is?  We went to Ollie's and got a computer desk for him to tightly slip in there instead of the nightstand.  He needed somewhere to put his desktop computer...there was no where else to put it!  We started out looking for a desk chair, til it was all said and done, he picked up a folding chair, which I think was the wisest choice of all...there's so little room in there, that this way he can fold it up when he's not using it and slip it under his bed.  Oh yeah...the bed.  Unfortunately, his bed had a head and foot board.  When you're 6ft 7in, that doesn't work out so well :(  He took something apart and rid himself of the footboard, but there's still like 4 posts sticking up, which he'd have to be aware of while sleeping.  He got the brilliant idea while we were at Ollie's to buy a box spring, which would then raise the mattress up about 5 inches, which will then allow his feet to hang off the bottom of the bed and hopefully avoid the posts.

This is another view of their bedroom.  That's their bathroom; it has a walk in shower.  The bathroom in the other bedroom has a tub/shower in it.  Adam's just thrilled to have his own bathroom!

Alyssa offered to come up and do their cleaning for them.  For a price.  She originally suggested $5,000 per month ;-).  They weren't interested.  Wonder why.

This is the view going into the other bedroom.  One of the guys in that room apparently is quite the cook, and he loves to bake.  His mom was telling us how he got a new springform pan, but hadn't had a chance to use it before he left to see how a cheesecake would come out using the pan.  These guys may be eating well :-)  This guy also lived in an apartment last year, so he had tons of kitchen stuff, which worked out well, since none of the other guys did!  I'm not sure how they will work out the food situation.  One of the guys brought about ten boxes of cereal, and I think they had about 30 two liter bottles of soda :)  Adam's on a smoothie kick right now, he took my old blender up and bought himself a juicer, so I think he'll be buying himself lots of fruits and veggies.

He drove around the streets behind the apartment building this afternoon hoping to find somewhere near by that he could park his car instead of always having it in the commuter lot out near Beaver Stadium, but found nothing.  All of the streets have no parking on the one side and the other side allows parking, but you can't park there from 2-6 am, so unfortunately he's gonna be stuck having his car parked a mile or so away.

Ever since Alyssa was a freshman at PSU, we have gone out for a Friday/Saturday in October on one of the weekends that there's an away game.  We would get out there in time for supper on Friday, then on Saturday, spend time with the kids, do some sightseeing, or shopping and just have the opportunity to spend some quality time with whichever child was living out there.  It's always worked out to be the weekend closest to our anniversary.  I fully anticipated doing likewise again this year, but learned yesterday that this year the fall conference for DiscipleMakers was moved a week earlier and is this same weekend that we usually go out.  October was the ideal month to do this; it was midway between the start of the semester and Thanksgiving break.  Unfortunately, unless we go out on a football weekend, I think there'll be no annual trip to PSU in October this year.  It was a little mini-vacation and had turned into a tradition.   I'm really disappointed. Really.

**I promised to tell you about the maintenance guy and why he was in the apartment.  Apparently, a 'couple' decided to try and find an empty apartment last evening that was not locked, and lo and behold, the guys' apartment door had not been closed securely.  They entered and had 'relations' on both beds in Adam and Matt's room.  There were some disgusting things left on both mattresses and the floor :(  The maintenance man came up and thoroughly scoured the carpeting and replaced both mattresses.  They apparently caught these two on hidden cameras entering the apartment, but at this point have not identified them (and may never).  Supposedly they will be contacting the police, but didn't choose to do it today, as the building was so hectic with students moving in.  I'm not sure that ultimately anything will come of it, but I was impressed with how the maintenance guy handled the whole thing.

Happy Birthday Kievah!

Tonight we got to help Kievah celebrate her 9th birthday (which is actually tomorrow):

I will NOT wear this.  Oh, YES, you will :)

Helping Kievah celebrate:

Almost Over Already???

What exactly happened to summer??  I can't believe that Adam goes back to Penn State a week from tomorrow already!  I feel like he just got home!  He'll be living in an apartment off campus this coming year with 4 other guys in his major (well, i think they are all 'engineering' majors...maybe not 'nuclear engineering' majors).  I think it'll be interesting to see how 5 guys living together in an apartment will pan out ;)  I don't expect it'll be anything like when Sarah and Alyssa lived together!

He took a day off this week and he and Katrina used the two Hershey Park tickets I bought earlier this year.  Our church orders them in the Spring and they are half the price of tickets bought at the park.  Katrina took these pics, I asked her if I could borrow (steal) them :)

And here's a pic taken this past weekend when Katrina visited us on Sunday.  She and Adam went to Musikfest for a few hours.

The last we talked, Alyssa was temporarily working at my office, covering while one of the phone receptionists was out recuperating from a total knee replacement.  Nancy came back last week, and Alyssa and I were totally expecting that she would be told, 'Thanks, it's been nice!'....but instead the practice administrator offered her a FULL TIME position with a raise and benefits!!  Clearly, (or at least, I hope) this is not what she wants to do with the rest of her life, but until she figures out where/when she's gonna get started with her pursuit of the ministry, this is certainly nice filler :)

Ocean City, MD

Holly and Alyce invited Alyssa and Morgan down to the beach for a few days this past week. Isn't this a great pic?!!?

Kurt's Song

Yesterday was Kurt's turn to sing at church.  As is typical, he chose a Michael Card song:)

Alyssa sang her song at the contemporary service yesterday, we ran downstairs after Kurt was done singing his song, to catch hers, but we missed it :(  She sang during communion and by the time we got down there they were singing the final hymn.  Boo.