Trip to Philly!

Joel and Kate moved into their own place and were having a housewarming party, so I had a pretty good excuse to go home for a week.

One of the first things I saw when I got home was dad wearing this shirt.  While lost is a pretty old show by now, I still totally geeked out!!

Now that dad is retired he has some free time to work on projects.  Granted, he doesn't have a lot of free time; Dad is always busy with one thing or another (while I was visiting he was working on helping family members with taxes!)  One of dad's projects is a sampler quilt.  Look at all of these awesome squares he made (please note that on the last picture he was sticking his tongue out at me, but still managed to take a good picture!)

I also got to spend time with my mom (she's the prettiest, right?!)

We were both reading the same book (from the written in red series...SO GOOD)

Joel and Kate's housewarming was the day after I arrived in Philly.  I met their puppy, Gizmo, who absolutely adores dad.

A lot of Kate and Joel's family showed up

And they received a lot of nice gifts.  The below pictures aren't even 1/4 of the "opening gifts" pics I took.

There were also lots of laughs

While I was home...it snowed!  In PA in March, this is a bit unexpected!

I still had online courses, so I spent most of my time in philly locked in my room working, only really venturing out for food.  Which brings me to my next topic:  I always forget how amazing dad's cooking is.  Food is one of the BEST things about going home.  i only got pics of one meal (chicken lettuce wraps with homemade ranch dressing), but dad also made steak and broccoli, eggs in a cloud and much much more.  SO GOOD!

On Wednesday, I took a break from school to go visit the newly renovated Lower Merion Libraries.  Our first stop was Bala Cynwyd.  It use to have a dark, dull brick facade, but now, WOW!

Bala now has a fancy young adult room.  I don't know if I mentioned it in this blog, but I'm going to try and focus my MLIS on Young Adults, so, at every library I took a picture of the YA room.  Mom was a willing model <3

Bala cynwyd also has a library cat!  Mom gave me a quarter to feed to it!

Next we went to Ludington Library.

Ludington is COMPLETELY different.  I mean, they gutted it and redid everything.  It doesn't look anything like it use to.  There are 2 entrances now, and lots of windows and it's all around beautiful.  My only qualm was that the YA room wasn't as robust as it could have been, or even as nice as bala's YA room:

Next mom wanted to show me here library.  Ardmore library is also where the processing center is.  I got a rare, behind the scenes tour of the processing center and it was cooler than expected!!  I may want a job working processing someday.

Mom showed me the Ardmore kids room, which had been rearranged and then explained what renovations she was expecting for her library in June, when they close down.  As with the previous 2 libraries I had to get a pic of the YA room.

2 things of interest in the Ardmore childrens library:

1.  A creep half human half slug duplo man/woman"

2.  Mom still had a poster that Jaida had made in high school:

I can't wait to see how the rest of the rennovations to the Lower Merion Libraries turn out!  Is it weird that I enjoy touring libraries?  Mom was a great tour guide and I learned a lot!

On thursday I studied and studied and then took a nap because I was overwhelmed with information.  When I woke up, no one was home.  There were no notes.  I went downstairs and saw, what I thought was a video playing.  I thought maybe dad was watching a movie and stepped away for a minute.  Nope.  Nope, nope, nope nope!

The last day before I left I went over to Joel and Kate's to play Risk on the Xbox 360.  The first game was dad v. Joel.  I think Joel won (but it was only because he had the most practice playing it on the xbox).  The second game was Joel and myself, and the computer won.  It, it just wiped us out.  Stupid Red.  The one thing I took away from my visit to Joel's house was how much Gizzy loves him

I arrived back in ohio safe and sound.  The next week was spring break, so I spent it reading (murder of crows and the maid of fairbourne hall) and watching all of the harry potter movies.  It was relaxing and all around awesomesauce.

Saturday it snowed.  I mean, come on ohio!  It's only 3 days from april and still snowing!?  To quote our weather man "March came in like a lion and is going out like a lion".  Sigh.

Yesterday I met up with Dom, KW and Mitch for lunch at olive garden then we went over KW's house to play Ticket to Ride.  It has to be my new favorite board game EVER!  It was so much fun!

KW won the first round, Mitch won the second round and I won the 3rd round.  So.  Much.  Fun!!!

This week I'm back to school.  It doesn't look to be an exceptionally tough week for school.  On a sad note I threw my back out.  I forgot how painful it is.  I try not to sit too long, especially when watching TV.  I spent most of last night pacing in front of the TV b/c sitting was too painful.  Wish me luck.  I hope it eases soon.  Until then I'll be using lots of Aleve (well, one every 12 hours) and walking.  If you have any great remedies, post them in the comments!