Pittsburgh!!! Part two

I was shocked to wake up and realize that it was 9 am instead of the 7:30 it felt like. I hadn't slept that well in a very long time!! With the daylight, I got to more completely check out my gift bag, which was a drawstring Steelers backpack bag. What a great purse that'll make! Inside, I was greeted with a #1 fan magnet with my name on it, some Steelers mints in a tin, a foam Steelers brick (good for throwing at the tv when the Steelers play stupid) and a really awesome hat that says I love Steelers football. It's so good to be loved this way!

I was able to say hello to Alicia and she got to open the box of goodies that I had mailed for her. The main part of her goodies were a quilt and pillow that I made for her.



Will, Karen, Alicia and I headed into Pittsburgh to the Heinz History Museum. That is one cool museum, from the saved goalposts of Three Rivers Stadium mounted outside the building, to the inside of the building itself. The history of Pittsburgh itself was fascinating. I hope to find a book sometime that includes some of what I saw in there. For Alicia and I, the best part was the 2nd floor, which was the sports history. There was a giant room that had all kinds of murals on the wall and some video screens that showed footage of Pittsburgh sports. I actually got chills from watching the Immaculate Reception with Franco Harris. I've seen that play before, but never on such a large screen. It was awesome! I was most interested in the Pirates, Pens and of course, the Steelers. There was some really cool stuff in there!

Some pictures from this floor:




Will decided that I couldn't get the true Pittsburgh experience if I didn't have a meal at Primante's. This is the original location, which started out with just a lunch counter. They are famous for their sandwiches, which are a meal in one. I ordered a salami sandwich, which they built on thick homemade bread, topping the meat & cheese with a layer of their fries and a layer of their vinegar based slaw. It sounds a lot weirder than it tastes, and I'd come with an open mind. It was surprisingly good, but I was not going to need food for quite a while after such a large sandwich!

Next stop was in the strip district, otherwise known as Steelers mecca. I was surrounded by more Steelers gear than I'd ever imagined and it was awesome! Needless to say, I found all kinds of fun stuff for myself, including bling for my car, shirts, coasters, buttons, another Terrible Towel....

Alicia's suggestion for my Pittsburgh experience was to take a ride on one of the Inclines, this one being across the rivers from Heinz Field. I'd actually never ridden on it before, so it was quite fun. The slope of this incline is so steep, you'd have a lot of trouble getting up to the top without assistance! You can get some great views of the city from the top.




We returned to Will's after that to chill out for a while. Dinner was at a mexican place not too far away and both Will & I decided on margaritas. It turned out that they were 28 oz. margaritas and I realized by the end of dinner that I was not entirely sure I'd be able to stand up without borrowing Will's arm! I did manage, however, and slowly sobered up while we watched some college football into the evening.

Pittsburgh!!!! Part one

My big weekend seemed to start off fine, at least until I got to my gate at the airport. I was soon greeted by the reality of about 7 different flights heading to Atlanta were delayed, due to gloomy weather there. My well timed flight did not leave Raleigh until 2 1/2 hours later than it was supposed to. So many other flights into Atlanta were also delayed getting there from other cities. Does that mean that my connecting flight to Pittsburgh was delayed so I could still catch it? Of course not! That one had to somehow leave on time, without me, of course. That put me in the less than comfortable position of flying on standby. I was praying that I'd not have to spend the night in Atlanta. I'm sure it's a nice city but its weather placed it firmly on my hit list since it tanked my evening plans. Not going to take the midnight train to Georgia....ever!

The only thing I had going for me was that there were many other people who missed their connecting flights, so even though the 2nd to last flight to Pittsburgh had about 40 people on the standby list, we all made it onto the flight. I was excited by the fact that there were quite a few who were decked out in Steelers gear, as was I. Can't go to Pittsburgh without wearing my black & gold! Even in Raleigh I followed a guy wearing an autographed Jerome Bettis jersey through security.

The upshot was that I arrived in Pittsburgh more than 3 hours later than I'd planned, so I didn't get to hang out with Beth & Mike, which greatly bummed me out. The upside was that I did get to Pittsburgh safely and Will was there with his famous Hat to pick me up. Even at that late hour, I was really happy to be in Pittsburgh. The sight that greeted me when I got to Will's house and to their guest room, was a bedframe wrapped in yellow Steelers tape, an inflated helmet hanging from the curtain rod, Steelers blanket on the bed and an awesome goodie bag full of Steelers stuff from Alicia! With all that black & gold goodness surrounding me, I was assured of sweet dreams for sure!

I AM READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!!!!!!

Yay, I fly to Pittsburgh this afternoon!!! One of my favorite cities and it's football season! Beth is going to meet me at the airport and Will has all kinds of fun planned for me. It's going to be the Pittsburgh experience!

I already mailed my face paint so I promise photos will go up when I get back home. Maybe I'll get on tv! Our seats are by the locker room tunnel under the jumbotron, lower level.

I can't wait!!!

Pictures to get me in the mood....

A great day!!!

Today started off cold and I thought I was getting sick, but Maria and I had our triathlon this morning in Chapel Hill. I have gotten so spoiled by the heat of the south that the low 40 temps really got my attention! We have to get there so early and since I was in the later timing to get started, there was a lot of waiting. Once I got in the pool, everything went well. It felt so wonderful to get into a heated pool after being outside! Today was 250 yards in the pool, a 9 mile bike ride and a 2 mile run. A super sprint tri, it's called.

I didn't have rubber legs this time when I got off my bike but I did a lot of walking with some sloooooowwww running in between. I had to put my stamp on the festivities, so I changed into my Gary Anderson jersey for the run part. There were a few times where I saw someone for the event taking photos while I was walking, so I was like "oh crap, another camera!" So I had to run past those people! Every part I ran, I had to twirl my towel. No fun in a Steelers jersey is complete without some Terrible Towel waving, and the Steelers fans in attendance enjoyed it!

Here are a few photos from today:

Maria and I trying to keep warm while waiting for our start



On my way to the finish









And.....if that wasn't enough to make this a great day....my Steelers kicked Cincinnati's butt 38-10 this afternoon!!!! Oh it's good to be alive!

Happy Birthday Matthew

Ok, I know Matthew's birthday was 9 days ago but I've been busy. My son is now 14 years old; it doesn't seem possible sometimes! I made a dog bone shaped cake and had fun making him blow out 15 candles (always have to have the extra one for good luck!)

Time to catch up on posting--Spirit day at school

I haven't posted in a while...earlier in the month, there was school spirit week at the high school. Can I just say...Matthew is perfect for these kind of festivities? I only wish I had thought to take a photo of Tacky Day because you would not believe what he put together....This pair of photos, though, are from Nerd Day. As you will see, Matthew had a great time dressing up! I can guarantee he'll make it into the yearbook from this!

Camping with the Brownies

Well, this past weekend, I accompanied Alice's Brownie troop on a weekend camping trip. It was about 1 1/2 hours from here and we drove there in pouring rain Friday evening. We went to a Girl Scout place that also had a horse facility. We figured, great! Um, yeah... The site we were assigned to (16 8 year old girls, 5 adults) looked like it hadn't been used in years. We got the only site on the place without flush toilets, which ok, outhouses are no biggie...this is camping after all. But the electricity for the stall was out and there were huge cobwebs in the hole. So everyone had to buddy up and hold the stall door open for the other person so they could see. The stalls on the other side of this outhouse had walls of spiderwebs, so we didn't even try to use them. Our shelter, which had a little kitchen area and showers, also had sinks covered with little dead bugs and there was a frog and spider living in the shower. So we adults decided that we'd prefer to remain stinky and grimy for the weekend instead. You can call me a city girl if you like...I don't bathe with wildlife of any kind!

I can tell you that we left the campsite in far better condition than it was left to us, and the leaders wrote up a several paragraphs long, 2 page letter of comments for the site caretakers. We slept in platform tents that had wooden bed frames and mattresses to put our sleeping bags on, which were fine. They kept the rain out and we weren't on the ground in the mud. The girls were all troopers about using the "hole" for doing their business. About the only plus to that outhouse is that it didn't reek like so many outhouses do. Other than that....

The highlight of the weekend was the horses. The girls got to groom and ride horses on the trails. Since they were Brownie level, there was an adult to lead every horse on the trail. I got to lead the horse Alice was riding on. She had an all white one named Merlin, who was a little spunky and didn't like to stay still, but he didn't spook Alice. I soon discovered that I had limited choices on the trail in many places...hmmm, so I step in the mud or do I step in the horse doody? The ground was messy in a lot of places from the rain. Other horses were different shades of brown and one had black & white coloring like a cow. And speaking of the bovine colored horse...now, I generally don't make a point of checking out animal anatomy because I simply don't care, but here was a you can't miss it even if you're not looking! Good night, I now understand the origins of the expression "hung like a horse". I was glad I did not have my camera with me.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend in spite of the rain and the bugs and mud. I am glad to be back home with a real shower and bed, a bug-free kitchen and football on the tv. The troop leaders took a lot of photos, so if I can get them to email me ones that had Alice in them, I'll be able to add some to this post later.

SARA!!!

BIG birthday shoutout today to my sister Sara...


HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!

Fun with Ella

Ok, I meant to post this a few days ago but better late than never. We got to see Sara and Ella briefly a weekend ago. Here are some pictures of Ella playing with some of the toys we still have around.

Birthday greetings heading to Charlottesville

Just giving a HAPPY BIRTHDAY shoutout today to my longtime friend Karen. Have a great day... LYLAS!!!!

So far, so good

The kids have all settled in the new school year and so far, all is well. Matthew is off to a good start in his first taste of high school. An A in math and B in English is a nice change of pace indeed. I warned Matthew that if he kept it up, he might end up on honor roll, and then would he do? Matthew just grinned at that. (if only he was that way at home) He's even made a couple friends at lunch and in class, and his resource teacher is really great. I talked to him for quite a while during open house and he's definitely going to have Matthew's back for the next 4 years. The guy grew up in Ogdensburg, so we got to chat about the north country. Kristen has made a ton of friends since we got here, so she's doing well in the middle school. Alice did have to change schools since our base school was different than when we were in the apartment, but so far, she is doing well and she likes it there. We definitely ended up with a good school situation.

We got to be adults again!

Thanks to St. Maria (my awesome sister)and Robert, Chris and I got to take a weekend trip that didn't involve kids or relatives for the first time ever. Alice called it our honeymoon... :-)(I suppose you could call it that since we chose to buy our first house instead of taking one right after we got married) We drove to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, which was about 3 1/2 hours from home for us. It was really fun. I'd been able to score cheap accomodations so that freed up more money for fun. It was not fancy like the hotel we stayed at in the Chicago area when Diana got married, but the rooms were clean and we slept well, and the beds didn't have coin slots attached to them. :-)

We also scored what for right now, counted as cheap gas.

We ate lunch one of the days at a tavern in the town. The food was pretty good and everyone who works in town, dresses up like the 1700's. It was a fun atmosphere.

I like this photo in particular


It was a cool place and I hadn't been there since I was 8 or 9. There is a lot of history in Virginia and I could very easily become a history junkie. It is a great place to take kids (even though we didn't!) and a great "living" history lesson.

The second day we went into town a while more, then headed to the local winery for a tour. There was a tavern on site so we ate lunch there, then headed in for the tour. It was pretty interesting and we learned some stuff about winemaking. We got to taste 7 different wines (good thing I ate, but even still I was buzzed after the first 6 tastes!). We bought a few bottles to take home with us.

It was a really fun weekend and it let us forget all the trouble at home. I care about Maria too much, so we did opt to return home, :-) but hopefully we won't have to wait another 15 years to get adult time again.