Great Weekend!

I truly need more weekends like the one I just had!

Friday night, I went to my friend Katie's bachelorette dinner at Chopsticks Bistro downtown. I had never had sushi before (unless you count the bite I had one time from someone's sushi lunch from Marsh...but I don't) and it was really good. I'm definitely a meat and potatoes kind of girl but I tried two different kinds of sushi and really liked them both. They also had the best crab rangoons I have ever had. Other than the great food, I had a good time with my teacher friends from school.

I woke up way too early on Saturday morning to head to Muncie for homecoming at Ball State. We all met at Allison's house and headed over to wait in horrible traffic to get into tailgating. I was a little nervous at first because we were out by the softball diamonds to tailgate and we had never been out there before (and it was freezing!), but we ended up having a really great time playing football, grilling out, people watching, and catching up. It was nice to act like a college student again, if only for a few hours.

With the best friends a girl could ask for: Laura, me, Ashley, Jess, and Allison.

Laura and I were the first ones to succumb to the cold temperatures and hang out in the car!

Ashley's 16-week-old pregnant belly. There's a little girl in there! I just know it!

I left Muncie around 5:30 to get back home. Then, something happened last night that is extremely rare in the marriage of Justin and Jennifer Leavell. We spend Saturday night together and went out on a date. Shocking, I know. Due to school, cheerleading practice, and yearbook meetings being back in full force and Justin and I already working completely opposite hours, I couldn't remember the last time we had spent more than two hours together, let alone a whole evening. So I came back home to get ready (and let me pause here to brag about the fact that I got home at 6:33, fed Maggie, took a shower, and was ready to leave at 7:40...that's quite a feat for me) and once Justin got home and changed, we were off. We went and walked around at the Hamilton Town Center for a little bit and then went to eat at Olive Garden.

This is how I liked dinner to be served...off of a menu...and not out of the kitchen. OK, I know that sounded horrible, but I'm still trying to get into this whole cooking thing.

We had a great time together. We are really trying to make more of an effort to make the most out of the time we do see each other each week. And yes, I know that there are couples out there that have it way worse than we do, but I can only attest to how our lives are.

Today has been spent doing laundry, cleaning up a bit, and grading. I also found out that Maggie did something that she had yet to do since she has lived with me and Justin--she got us for two meals at breakfast. Since Justin has to get up so early on Sunday mornings to go to work, I got up and fed Maggie as soon as she came into our room crying at 5 a.m. so she wouldn't wake him up. However, she got Justin when he got up because she cried and cried like she had never been fed and he gave her another bowl of food. To a 16-pound cat that gets no more than a half a cup of low-calorie food a day anyway, it must have felt like Christmas morning. Here she is basking in her victory:


If our cat can get the best of us, I hate to think about what our kids will trick us into one day!

Fall!

Yes, fall is finally here. I've been waiting anxiously for it. A saw a hint of it a couple of weeks ago as I was driving over Geist and a gust of wind blew some leaves on my car. I halfway felt like I was in the beginning credits of a Lifetime movie and a camera on a helicopter should be filming my car as I pulled into the driveway of one of the giant, gorgeous homes on Geist. Too bad that wasn't true.

The weather has been very fall-like this week. The temperatures have been cool enough for sweatshirts and warm meals, like the chili and crockpot chicken and noodles made in our house this week. I'm looking forward to several things this fall including our first wedding anniversary. I also love the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when your home feels a little cozier than it does during any other time of the year.

However, this week has also brought some sadness to our family. My great aunt Hazel passed away on Tuesday. She was my mom's aunt and since I never knew my maternal grandmother, my mom's aunts always seemed like surrogate grandmothers to me and Jess. I have fond and warm memories of going to my aunt Hazel's house. I remember that she had the best backyard that I had ever seen as a little girl simply because it had tomato plants in it. We used to play for hours with magnets on the back porch with her dog, Pepper, following us around. And when we were lucky to spend the night, we got to watch TV and eat popcorn and steal as many jelly beans from the candy jar in the kitchen as we wanted to, just as long as we didn't tell mom. The beds in her house were always too tall for me to climb onto by myself, and I thought the $2 bill under the glass in her vanity mirror was the coolest thing ever. She suffered a stroke at the end of June and had been doing well, but after 91 years, she passed in her sleep at the nursing home. I pray that we can all be as lucky to have 91 years on this earth and die without any kind of suffering.

I'm doing more of what I need to do this weekend and that includes spending time with friends. Tonight I am celebrating a friend's upcoming wedding with a bachelorette dinner downtown. Tomorrow, I will be a college student for a day and return to BSU for tailgating, the homecoming game, and a typical BSU Saturday night in the village. Sunday I will return to the real world and grade furiously in anticipation for the end of the quarter.

Have a great weekend!