I’m writing you from chilly Philly! Danny and I left warm South Florida on Saturday morning and after stopping to see a few friends in Melbourne drove to South Carolina. We spent the night in South Carolina and resumed our drive back to Philadelphia on Sunday. Overall the drive was not too bad, although we both spent today recovering from the trip. Danny had to work today so he left for New Jersey this morning, I caught up on some household things and unpacked all day. Tomorrow I head back to campus to get a jump on some research before the semester begins.
As promised, here are the pictures from our holidays in Florida. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures at some locations so not all of our visits are included…we didn’t take any in Jacksonville with Brian & Coral and in Melbourn with Sam, Erich, and Ethan.
I’ve also learned a big lesson when documenting trips and vacations…less dogs, less children and more adults. Although I have a few pictures of my sister and brother in here, the rest of the pictures are of the dogs and our nieces and nephews. I didn’t even get a picture of Danny’s mom or my mom! I did get one of my Dad but I assumed he’d rather I leave it out
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! So I’m assuming some of you received your Christmas cards from Christmas, FL. Let me first tell you how we came upon such a magical place…we were driving down to South Florida for the holidays, having just visited Brian and Coral in Jacksonville, FL and we stopped for lunch, excited to see a Taco Bell. Upon our exit from the highway we noticed a sign that said Christmas, FL - 10 miles. Now, being a Florida native, I have heard of Christmas, FL as one of those random cities that no one is quite sure exists. But alas I had found it! And with a fist full of Christmas cards to mail to boot!!!! Who could resist!!!?!??!! So we drove the extra mileage and mailed our cards from the very center of Christmas spirit… on this continent anyway, a Bethlehem postcard is hard to come by in these parts!
We have spent this Christmas holiday in a combination of South Florida locations… Palm Beach Gardens, Miami Springs, and Arcadia; enjoying our time in all of them….pictures to come!!! But it was tonight that earned our subject of the blog honor… Danny and I are spending New Years Eve with his mom in Palm Beach Gardens and we weren’t sure what to do to ring in the new year. We thought about going downtown or to a crowded bar/restaurant but we did not want to be on the road so we decided to stay home. Mrs. Messina’s neighbors Mark and Marlin invited us over to celebrate. They were also staying home and doing the low key thing so it would be nice to do it together. Upon arrival we were greeted warmly and settled in for a comfortable evening. Upon midnight Marlin greeted us with 12 grapes, she said it was a tradition within her family to eat 12 grapes at midnight. Danny and I quickly agreed (both big fans of grapes) and counted our way to twelve. I initially thought the 12 grapes may symbolize the 12 coming months, but upon further review I realize they may symbolize the 12 strokes of the clock. Either way my thoughts were consumed with the coming months as I chewed on the grapes…our trip to Europe in March, my preliminary exams in Aprilish (ideally), begining my dissertation in May (ideally), and other plans during the summer months; as I thought, I realized what a fantastic tradition this was. Wow, who knew the impact 12 grapes could have! Upon leaving Mark and Marlin’s welcoming home, we were each given a tangelo to take home as a symbol of good luck for the coming year. Marlin said she remembers these traditions fondly as she place each tangelo in our hands (FYI…oranges, tangerines, and possibly anything circular can work). What a good way to start the year! Once home, as we each placed our citrus in the refrigerator at Danny’s mom’s house I was excited at the prospect of waking on the first of the year and eating my tangelo. These are definitely two traditions I hope to continue! So as you settle in to your new year I wish you the joy of a nice cool citrusy fruit and the anticipation of twelve upcoming months. Happy New Year! Love, Emily
It’s pretty late and we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow so I’ll keep this short. I finished my semester today, graded the last of my students’ exams and submitted their grades. Tomorrow Danny and I begin our drive home to Florida for the holidays. I wanted to let you all know Christmas cards will eventually be on their way. We ordered them weeks ago but I knew I would not have time to address them till the semester was over. Unfortunately, it seems we’ve lost the file for the addresses (new laptop, didn’t save the file when I dropped the old laptop) so I will be hand addressing them all in the car tomorrow and Sunday. But they will get there eventually (possibly a few days after Christmas depending on how far away you live)…interesting part is all of the cards will be postmarked with the fascinating locale of wherever we happen to be when I finish addressing and stamping them! OK, off to bed. Happy Holidays!
This will be a very short post, but I wanted to get these pictures up before I forget. Danny, Linus, Charlie, and I drove to Michigan and Indiana to spend Thanksgiving with Danny’s Dad and family. We had Thanksgiving dinner at Sheila’s mom’s house in Grand Rapids, MI. It was very yummy! We then went back to Danny’s Dad’s house in Indiana. We went into Chicago the Saturday after Thanksgiving and these are pictures from that trip. We had a great time! We went to a German Christmas village, the ESPN zone (to watch the FL/FSU Game), and then saw the play Wicked! Enjoy the pictures! I hope to get some more stuff up once my semester is over. -Emily Click here for pictures!
Obama was coming to town, so my friend Danielle and I decided to go to the Obama rally in North Philadelphia. It was being held close to Temple so we decided to meet on campus around 5:30 AM to go stand in line for the 8:15AM speech. We got in line at 5:30 and the line was already a block long. But we were still fairly close to the beginning of the line (that is how long this line was). So we finally get in once the gates opened around 6:30. As we were headed towards the crowd we were approached by one of the campaign volunteers. He wants to know if we’d be interested in standing on the stage behind the senator…Ohhhh my GOD! YES! OF COURSE!!!!! So we get these special pink bracelets and are escorted to the stage. What luck! Randomly selected to stand on stage behind the senator!!!! Only thing is, once up there you are not allowed to use your camera at all during the speech. We were given signs to hold and we stood around in our reserved spots on stage for about 2 hours until he got there. Below are links to footage of the speech (I’m in a white shirt behind the woman in orange…in the full length video, most of the speech all you can see is my chin, but sometimes you can see my whole face). There is also a link to pictures that I took before and after the speech. Remember, I was not allowed to use my camera during the actual speech, which is unfortunate because we was SOOOOO… close! He was about 12 feet away and I wasn’t allowed to take a picture!!!!
This was soooo…. exciting!
Enjoy!!
Right click the links to open in a new window so you don’t lose this page…
Yes, those are my speedo bottoms and those are goggles on his head!
So there is this Dog Carnival that takes place in Philadelphia every year and there is a costume contest with a big red carpet and great prizes. I wanted to enter the dogs in it this year (we entered last year but just wore plain costumes cause we did not know about the contest) so I went all out with Linus’ costume and decided to make him Michael Phelps cause I had the stuff at home and the Olympics had just ended. I spent all morning making Gold medals out of thick foam, gold wrapping paper, and flag ribbon and we headed over to the park…unfortunately the carnival was postponed due to the weather. Sadly, it has been postponed for the same weekend Danny and I will be in Wisconsin for Chris Taylor’s wedding. So Linus will never get to enter the contest…I really think he would have had a chance too! So I wanted to post the pictures so at least some people will get to see his costume. We meet other daschunds one Saturday a month at the dog park and the next meetup is a costume day for Halloween so he might dress up for that too, but sadly no contest.
We had to wait until our postcards arrived before we could post anything about this trip! Didn’t want to spoil the surprise! Danny and I went to Intercourse, PA for Labor Day. (Yes, it is a real place). It is actually in Lancaster County which is Amish country. There are different stories as to how Intercourse got its name, but oddly enough it is actually located between Blue Ball, PA and Paradise, PA…. and Virginville, PA is nearby. No I am not making this up!
We had a great visit and enjoyed all of the Amish shops and sights. Here are a few pictures from our day, including an Amish horse and buggy we got stuck behind and Danny enjoying dinner at an Amish family style restaurant…very yummy!
Sorry it has been a while since my last post. The Fall semester is keeping me busy. I need to have published a research article as first author by January in order to move forward in my program so in addition to classes and teaching I’ve been working on that article.
I wanted to catch up with some pictures…
The two below are from my Mom’s visit to Philly. We had a great time and I even got her to eat sushi!!!
Hi everyone. The Livestrong race was last weekend, and ended up being a great event.
I dragged my beautiful wife with me early in the morning. In order to make it, we had to leave the house at 5:45, or so we thought. It ended up taking us 30 minutes for the first 45 miles and 50 minutes to do the last 2 miles. We almost missed the whole thing! Somehow we made it just in time.
The good news is that I made my fund raising goal for the event. With everyone’s help I was able to raise $270 towards Cancer research! Thanks so much for all your support.
I’ve also taken up weekend running. Getting up so early during the week (5am) has made it difficult for me to sleep in too late during the week. During today’s run I decided to go to the next bridge past the furthest point I’ve gone to. I provided the map below, turns out I went over 8 miles! Who knew I could do that?
Anyways, thanks again for everyone support last week. Here’s this morning’s run:
Danny and I left warm South Florida on Saturday morning and after stopping to see a few friends in Melbourne drove to South Carolina. We spent the night in South Carolina and resumed our drive back to Philadelphia on Sunday. Overall the drive was not too bad, although we both spent today recovering from the trip. Danny had to work today so he left for New Jersey this morning, I caught up on some household things and unpacked all day. Tomorrow I head back to campus to get a jump on some research before the semester begins.
