a WICKED weekend

• Okay, so I said that I would post pics from this last weekend, so here they are - - my friend Megan flew into Ohio from Reno and then we drove up to Chicago and went to see the musical WICKED at the Ford Oriental Theater. (for those of you who may not have heard about WICKED before - the play is based off of the book, which is the background story on the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz - the author has also written books about the ugly stepsisters and other characters; it's a really creative idea) It was SO much fun and the play was outstanding!!! I highly recommend it to everyone! The play changed a lot of stuff from the book, but it had a better ending and was still wonderful to watch! We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton, which was exquisite and gorgeous! The theater was beautiful as well and contained very detailed carvings all over the walls, but they would not let us take any pictures of the inside of it. We sat in the balcony section in the first row, so we had one of the better views. We also ate dinner at the Park Grill, which was right next to an ice skating rink : )
• In just one more week I will be flying back to Vegas for 3 weeks! My winter break is the only real break that I get during the entire year (since I have to take summer classes too), and my classes start again during the first week of January.
  
• Enjoy the slideshow : )

We had a great Thanksgiving. Our friends that live Indianapolis came down. After dinner everyone wanted to take a boat ride-as you can see it was a "little" cold-38degrees but hey after drinking Asti Spumante and full tummys why not!! Strange though we were the only ones on the lake-hmmmm- some people just don't know how to have fun:) Natuarally when we got back we had to havc more Asti to warm up.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Have a great day of eating, drinking and being merry!!

One down... many more to go

• Just thought I'd share with everyone that I finished my first quarter of grad school!! (at Ohio University) We had our last (and worst) final today, but now it's over! Our winter break is 7 weeks long! It's the only real break we get each year, so I'll be going down to Vegas in a couple of weeks - - - Only 7 more quarters until I get my Master's in speech-language pathology and then a few more years if I choose to do a PhD : )

• Here are a couple of pics of some friends of mine - one is of my friend Katie and me and the other is me with 2 of of the 3 students we have in our program from India.

• Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!! My friend from Reno is flying out and we're going to see Wicked in Chicago this weekend - I'll try to take pics and post some afterwards : )
  

College Life Again!

This weekend Melissa and I drove up to Tallahasee with our good friends Sam and Alaina Elliott. We have known the Elliotts since we were all in school in Tallahassee where we were neighbors. This is the first time in 4 years that the 4 of us have been back to our Alma Mater together. We went up for a game (FSU/Maryland (FSU won 24-16 (Go Noles!!!))) and ended up trying to re-live the college lifestyle again. Interestingly enough, this time:

1) There was more Pepto Bismol and Mylanta
2) We naturally awoke at 7:30 am
3) We couldnt figure out why we were the only ones on the road at 10:30 (where is everybody??)
4) Bar's don't open till it's time for us to go to bed.

We have been having a lot of fun - here are a handful of pictures for you. Enjoy!

Good Eat'n

This is a strange thing to blog about but I just had the best pickle I have ever eaten. My friend recommended I pick up a jar of Bubbies pickles. She claimed they were the best in the world. I am now inclined to agree with her. I hope it's not just a west coast thing. Oh yeah and they sell Australian Toaster Biscuits out here too! Turns out, they only sell them on the west coast now. Just one more reason for the Floridians to come out and visit me.

Kopman deck

Hi, our deck is finally finished. the 3 center panels are wrought iron, lots of room for family gatherings! The temps are dipping down below freezing at night but the days are really nice. We have a lot of Canadian Geese in our lake and of course the pesky beavers blocking our area where we are going to build our dock. I guess we are going to let the beavers stay till the spring and then it is bye-bye beavers.

Tom and our neighbor went fishing yesterday and caught some nice size bass. We will probably pull our boat out of the water next week for the winter.

Love you all!