Puerto Rico!

We went to Puerto Rico from Dec 19-23 to take part in my brother's wedding. We were so pleased to be able to go (and I was asked to do a reading -- in English, thank goodness, as I have no Spanish). In a complete surprise, my mom's entire family was able to come (there are about 23 of us), and we also had family friends, an aunt and uncle from my dad's side of the family, and several of my brother's friends make the trip.

As you can imagine, we took some pictures. :)



This was the boys' first flight. They were actually wonderful on the flight. Nathan had a hard time before takeoff on the flight from Atlanta to PR, but once he fell asleep and had about an hour-long nap, he did great. Otherwise, we had them watch movies the whole time. Thank goodness for technology. Luke also got to sit in the cockpit! I'll have to find that picture -- Hal took it on his phone.



The first night in PR, we surprised Sylvia with an impromptu shower. This is a picture of Sylvia (in the middle, between my sister and I), and all the girl cousins except for Laura, who was randomly missing at this moment. (She did this so much that it became a running joke to yell "Where's Laura?!" randomly and she got a shirt on Christmas that said "Where's Laura?")



Nathan's first time on the beach! He loved it!!! :) Luke also had a great time. The waves were ROUGH so we didn't do too much oceaning, but we did get to do a bit.



Sylvia's beautiful church during the rehearsal!



In Puerto Rico, it is customary to do a rehearsal, but not a rehearsal dinner. My parents threw a big dinner anyway, and worked with a friend of Sylvia's to make a custom Rupp Arena cake! We also had a flash mob for Sylvia at the rehearsal -- she had posted something on Facebook a couple of months ago about a flashmob and said something about people being welcome to do something like that at the wedding. So my mom wrote a song to the tune of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" called "We wish you a happy wedding." And my aunts, cousins, and I all got different verses. (Hal and I sang "Your family and friends came from near and from far/to see you get married and drink at the bar" -- and all the guys chimed in to yell "DRINK AT THE BAR!" with us.) It was a hoot. Also, Donnie wore his dress blues to the rehearsal, which was really special.



At the rehearsal dinner on the balcony looking over the ocean!



Me and my buddy at the rehearsal dinner.



Luke was all about talking to uncle Donnie before we got in the bus to go to the wedding.



We cleaned up!



Post wedding happy couple!



My parents with Nathan post wedding. The priest gave Nathan and Luke big blow pop suckers before church. Which Nathan LOVED. And drooled all over.



My mom (called Gammy by the boys) and Nathan dancing in the bus before going to the reception.



Bus Selfie!



Nathan and Hal bonded a lot the last two weeks.



Luke and his new aunt!



He was a MANIAC dancing. A maniac. He even tried to go get the microphone to sing at one point. He was breakdancing and everything. Out. of. control.



Sylvia and my cousin Kaysie. Notice anything different? This is Sylvia's SECOND WEDDING DRESS!



Cake



My cousin Kayla brought Santa hats.



Me and Donnie.



Sisters!

 The venue/Sylvia brought out funny hats and maracas! Because a band with dancers and this thing came in to party with us the last hour.

The next day, we went to Old San Juan (Luke though we were going to Old Sand Lot and wanted to know where the new sandlot was) and explored the town and the fort. Puerto Rico is gorgeous.









Climbing on cannonballs.

New York City

I spent Feb 23 to 26 in New York City with Hal!

We headed up to NYC for a sociology conference. My conference presentation went well (I presented the results of my facebook and mourning survey I did in late summer), with some of the best discussion after the panel presentations I have experienced at a conference. It was definitely worth the trip.

Also, I GOT TO SLEEP AS LATE AS I WANTED and we ate and saw shows and spent too much money but it was worth it. We saw Memphis and Sister Act -- we just bought discount tickets to whatever looked interesting/was available. We rode the on/off bus on Friday, which allowed us to see a lot of the hot spots of the city a lot quicker than my waddling would allow. We saw Balto in Central Park and we ate excellent Austrian food at a little place called Edi and the Wolf. We went to the top of the Empire State Building (it was scary!). Obviously, we were total tourists, but it was nice.

Luke spent the weekend at my parents' house and he had a blast by all accounts. He was apparently a perfect angel, too. He never cried "without a reason" even if "some of the reasons were stupid." Ha!

A day at the zoo

Hal and I used our day today to walk around the Indianapolis Zoo (among other things). Well, Hal walked...I waddled. :) One of the cool things at the zoo is feeding the giraffes! I fed a 10-month-old baby giraffe, and Hal got to feed Mama, while baby tried to lick his hand off.

I am so professional.

This weekend was the conference in Oklahoma, where I presented two papers. The first was on sexual content, sexual themes, and sexual consequences in "Secret Life of the American Teenager."



The second was about faith healing testimonies on the internet.



(I also look really really short in this picture. I am short, of course, but I think I might even look shorter than I am.)

It was a really good conference and I am glad to get two more presentations under my belt!

Sunday Snapshot: Salzburg I

On our 2007 Europe trip, we began in Salzburg, Austria (after a bus ride from the Munich airport).

All of these pictures were taken within the same square. I so loved Salzburg, and I fully reserve the right to post gabillions more pictures from there. (On a side note, I am apparently hungry while I'm putting this together, because these pictures are all about food.)



I'm not going to lie. I want to be these people when I grow up.



That's a wheel of cheese. And I'm in heaven.



One of the things we ate. At this place, one of our friends tried to ask for a bottle of water in German, and he asked for a bottle of water without the water! It was hilarious and the shopkeeper was cracking up.



I love markets.

Sunday Snapshot: Austrian Countryside

(June 10, 2007)

Beautiful lake and beautiful mountains.



(That's Hal at the end of the dock.)

Sunday Snapshot: Positano

After a bus ride around hairpin turns, honking cars, and motorcycle riders with death wishes, we pulled into Positano, Italy.



Positano is a city clinging to a hill, the houses and buildings all breathtakingly perched on a hill that crashes into the Mediterranean.



We went with an idea of relaxation, and after scaling a fence to find a small trail, we found ourselves at a mostly-deserted beach. We rented a chair and changed into our swimsuits and hung out in the warm sun.





We laid in the sun and dipped our toes in the (freezing) Mediterranean for several hours, making the most relaxing day of our trip to Italy.

Sunday Snapshot

With what will perhaps be a new feature on the blog, I have decided to comb my photo archives and share a photo on Sundays. I have done such a horrible job with recapping our trips and sharing photos that I hope the Sunday Snapshot give these types of posts a home (rather than just the random: O Hai, I went to Rome! type of post).



I thought this was kind of a cool place to start. This is a photo of the adornments on top of the gates surrounding Buckingham Palace in London. Hal and I visited Buckingham on March 12, our first day in Londan.

Now, the first time I was at Buckingham in 2000, we were milling about on a beautiful June day taking pictures, when low and behold, the Queen drove in! (Well, let's be honest, she didn't drive, she was driven. And she waved. Like you would expect the Queen of England to wave.) That was super cool. This time, no Queen (more importantly, no William or Harry) and not much sun. But cool skies and neat little designs and architecture. We enjoyed staring at the Palace as rain misted and drizzled around us, but as for London, Buckingham isn't my favorite place.

While I was in London and Paris in March, I developed an unhealthy love for wrought iron-ish things (see Tower, Eiffel). So I have a bunch of pictures of little designs on fences and gates and doors. Silliness. To show you what I mean, see Exhibit 2:



Again with the Buckingham! Again through a gold-colored gate. This is a picture of a gate shot through a gate! What the heck -- it's a postmodern explosion of nonsense! (Note to self: Let's do some editing before we post pictures next week, ok?) Anyway, this was an ok idea in theory. I don't know how well it really worked out in practice.

I also really enjoy photographing light posts. I have no idea where this comes from. I apparently have a fixation on lamp posts (perhaps from School's Out Parties of yore, where the party wouldn't start until the streetlight came on?), and spend too much time photographing them.

Both of these photos prove one thing: thank goodness I have digital cameras these days. I would be a poor, poor woman if I were still shooting film.

Naked Boys Singing

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Naked Boys Singing
The best play I never saw
But this guy: Priceless

(Among the things we were going to do in NYC was finding the Naked Cowboy. We never found the Naked Cowboy. However. Before we went, we heard about a little play called Naked Boys Singing. We tried and we tried to convince my mom to see it with us. She REFUSED! We did, though, find this lovely guy in Times Square, where he stood promoting the show. He probably thought we were nuts because we were entirely too excited to meet him and take our picture with him.)

For more Bad Haiku Friday, check out Laura's page, with a compilation of others playing along.

Harvard (Hahvahd)

When my mom, sister, and I were in Boston and New York, we visited Harvard. We had taken the on and off trolley with my school friend Jessica, and we were ambling around the campus of the perhaps best-known ivy league school.

Of course, we were lost.

We stood on the street corner, map in hand. Our map was in a tourist book. I had control of the map, and was working to orient myself to the map and my surroundings.

To do so, I turned the map (and the book) upside down.

A couple of seconds or so later, a lovely young woman stopped jogging, took her ipod headphones out of her ears, and she approached us with a smile.

"Can I help you find something?" she asked politely. "I go here."

She was very nice and pointed us in the direction we wanted to go.

After she jogged away, a smile on her face (those ivy league-ers can SMILE while they JOG), I remembered that I had the book upside down.

"She didn't think I could read!" I wailed. "The book was upside down! That's why she stopped!

"She thought to herself, 'Those girls must go to a STATE school!'"

Bad Haiku Friday: Food for Thought

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Eaten too much junk
Cheesecake for dinner this week
Monday I diet

(*I did not eat all this by myself. My mom, sister and I shared. We had this for dinner one night in New York. In front is Snickers Cheesecake, to the right is carrot cake and to the left is white chocolate raspberry chessecake -- YUM!)