My Mom Visit!!

Happy October!  I went a month between blogging because my week is usually Work, School, Sleep, Eat, Repeat.  Not much to blog about lol.

Some highlights of the past month.  I tried a new wine called Bin 50 with Mitch.  Turns out I'm not a huge fan of wine.

While we were hanging out, I saw Mitch's most recent crochet project.  Do you know how hard it is to crochet something with a diagonal?  Pretty tough.  Mitch is my new crochet hero!!

Later in the month I had a Dr. appointment and had some blood drawn.  Turns out I don't have veins.  They poked me twice in upper right arm, once in the mid left forearm before they finally found blood in my hand.

Mom scheduled to come visit from 10/24 thru 10/26.  This means it's time to scrub the condo clean!!  It's nice to have a reason to deep clean.  The main things that really need a solid scrubbing were the sink:

toilet:

and the worst culprit, the tub:

The instant mom got here we did what I do best, take a selfie (you can totally see where I get my good looks from <3 ):

When we woke up on Saturday we went on a library crawl, 7 libraries in 6 hours!  Fair warning, as mom is a childrens librarian, a lot of the pictures are from the kids rooms in the various libraries.

We started by visiting the BEST library, Oberlin Public Library.  It was nice to show mom where I work, my displays (http://opldisplays.blogspot.com/) and my AWESOME coworkers!

Next up was the Strongsville library, where I will be doing my MLIS internship in January.  It was a a cute library with dollhouses

and cute signs in the kids room

We then drove north to the Lakewood public library.  Whoever drew the advertising on the white board had some mad skillz!

The Lakewood library childrens room had some weird murals.  They were kinda formal and stiff for a kids area:

Next up on our crawl was the Rocky River Library.  It was a BEAUTIFUL library, with huge windows,

benches almost too pretty to sit on,

chandeliers,

and even a fireplace!!

We took a quick detour from our library tour to pick up my new glasses.  While I like them, they're going to be my backup glasses as I like my regular glasses better.

Mom and I made our way over to the Westlake Porter public library, where I was a substitute librarian for a few months.  It's another really beautiful, open, airy library with inspirational quotes,

and giant maps:

Our second to last library was the North Olmsted library.  I spend most days here when not at work.  This is my second home and a great place to do school work!  Mom and I took a quick chill break on the benches outside the North Olmsted library.

Our last library on the crawl was Vermillion's Ritter Public Library.  It's a green library that has actually won awards.  They have signs all around the library explaining how it helps the environment.

The inside of the Ritter Public library was no less impressive.  The kids room had a chandelier

and a BOAT!!

The teens room had this display which made me giggle:

The local history room had another gorgeous dollhouse:

The second floor of the Ritter library had a special vegetative roof

and a fireplace!!!

Over all it was an AMAZING time!  It was really neat to visit all of the unique libraries that Cleveland-westside has to offer.  We barely even touched on all of the awesome libraries Ohio has to offer.  I guess mom's going to have to come out and do another library crawl with me again.

No big plans for the next few weeks other than trying to survive school and work.  It may be another month before another blog.  Thank you for your patience my wonderfully faithful readers <3 .

Philly Trip 2014 AFTERMATH

Mom noticed my messy car while I was visiting and she said that if I dropped by she would clean it!  I have the BEST MOM!  Before:

After:

BEST PARENTS EVER!!

The trip home to Ohio was uneventful.  The first thing I did when I got home was to change it up by dying my hair!  BOOM!  Raven haired beauty!

I then proceeded to spend the next few days recovering.  I had managed to get covered in bruises, cuts and bug bites on my trip to philly

Only 2 things have happened since my philly trip.  I got to play makeup with my bestie Mitch.  I may have created a monster because she totally outshines me in both of these pictures.  Yup, I'm friends with a freakin princess!!!

When I finally went back to work, I was working on some cataloging stuff and THIS!  This picture was on the back jacket of The Sexy Vegan Cookbook.  I couldn't have asked for anything better!!

PHEW!  All done Philly blogging.  I just started 2 more classes this week, so, until classes slow down, blogs will, once again, be few and far between as I'll just be working, sleeping or learning.  Sigh.

Philly Trip 2014 Days 5 and 6

Today was fairly uneventful.  We took a family picture.  It was a race against time.  You only have so much time to take successfully pictures before the youngest kids start squirming to run around.  As you can tell from mom and Joel's smiles, Henry was squirming right from the start.

Luckily we got a few good pictures:

right after family pictures I headed up to KOP to get dinner with my amazing friends Katie and Chris.  It was so much fun!  We talked, and laughed and caught up.

When I got home, Jeff, Ryan, Jaida and myself played ticket to ride:

It was really just Jaida vs myself, and in the end I managed to pull out a win!!

Before going to bed I forced Jaida to model with the bottle of Caladryl lotion that I'm pretty sure has been around since I was a child (at least 25 years old)

Day 6 was spent celebrating sushi-fest.  We went to an all you can eat buffet/sushi bar.  To say it was disappointing would be an understatement.  Still we got some good sibling pictures...

Right behind us, in the picture, is a fish pond.  Everyone had fun feeding the fisheys!

It was a solid ending to our family reunion!  2 random pictures left from day 6 are:

After spending every night girl-talking with my sister, I feel like we're closer than ever.  I had so much fun getting hugs and cuddles from my sweet nieces and nephews, and LOVED reconnecting with my brothers, sister-in-law Rachel, parents and extended family.  I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful, loving, all around AWESOME family!!  I miss them all already.