Family Vacation

Every summer since I can remember, my family has gone on vacation for a week-ish. This year, for the first time ever, we won't be able to go because I have an externship and classes and Aaron will probably have to take summer classes to be able to graduate on time. So we were talking about possibly going somewhere over spring break since my sister and Aaron and I have the same week off. But then I got a brilliant idea!! Starting when I was about 6 or 7 my family and some friends would go skiing in northern Michigan over the long Martin Luther King holiday. When I was about 10 or 11 we stopped making these trips. Since then we've gone to Mad River whenever possible and we've made two trips to Michigan to visit my aunt and uncle who live within an hour drive of two different ski resorts, but it just hasn't been the same. So I get this super amazing idea to go skiing over Christmas break as our "family vacation." We've started planning and I'm getting very excited! We're leaving a few days into the new year and stopping off at my aunt's house for a day to take my cousin's skiing and to teach Aaron on the 'easy slopes.' Then we'll head farther north to Boyne Mountain and spend the next 4ish days skiing. I'm excited!:)

Halloween Fun!

I've been really lucky to make some great friends here at Miami. We have a small class, there's only 19 of us. It's only been about 2 months since classes started but since we spend every weekday together and we hang out pretty much every weekend, we've all gotten really close. We're like a little speechie family!:)
Last night three of the girls that live together had a Halloween party. It was a lot of fun and there were some really creative costumes!

Ashley and I were the pink ladies

Of course Aaron had to dress up as Napoleon!

My favorite costumes of the night! My friend Meredith and her boyfriend, Tim, were Popeye and Olive Oil! He even carried around a can of spinach.

Napoleon's brother Kip showed up.

Our little Speechie family

It was a great night and we had a lot of fun!:)

Aaron's addiction..

Those of you that know Aaron, know that he's pretty much addicted to Halo. It's one of his favorite things to do when he has some free time, and sometimes it's quite funny when he plays. A lot of times he ends up yelling at his team and it usually goes something like this "You're Gay, You're Gay, You're Gay, You're Gay, You're Gay." Then he, ever so cleverly, quickly quits. I tried to capture him at his best, but had to settle for this...This second one isn't of Aaron playing Halo, but I thought it was funny. I had just made him some toast and he is yelling at me because I did not put the butter and jelly all the way to the very edges of the bread... Just a warning, it gets a little X-rated at the very, very end.

I live with a boy!!

Aaron and I lead very normal, uninteresting lives. I find it hard to think of things to blog about since there's not much going on in our lives these days. I decided to ask Aaron for an idea of something to blog about. His response? Periods. Gross right? So I'll spare from the wonderful-ness that could have come if I would have taken his advice. But it did give me an idea for something to write about, so he is slightly useful after all!;-)

Starting about this time a year ago, Aaron and I started seriously talking about getting married. (And by talking I mean I was putting the pressure on him for a ring.) We also talked a lot about what would happen this fall when I started grad school. We both hated the long distance relationship and knew that we didn't want to do it anymore, so we started talking about living together when I came to grad school. We realized it would make some people unhappy since we weren't planning on getting married yet, but decided that even if we weren't living together we'd still be going to the same school. So financially it made the most sense to live together.

Since my freshman year of college I have technically not lived at home. Sure, I'd come home some weekends, over breaks and for the summer, but 9 months a year I lived at school. Even still I always considered my parent's house "home." This summer, about a week before classes started, it hit me that I was moving out for good. I would never again live at my parent's house. This was very sad for me because I love my parents. They are the greatest parents in the whole world! Not only was I moving out of my parent's house, but I was moving in with a boy! Aaron had lived with us before, but for the most part he was contained to the basement. And now we didn't have my mom to cook and clean, we were going to have to do it on our own.

Living with Aaron is definitly not what I expected. Last year, I lived completely on my own, so I was used to being able to shower whenever I wanted, eating random meals at random times, I had total control of the (walk-in!!!) closet and I got the bed all to myself. Now I have to get up a little earlier to shower before Aaron does and I have to share the bed. This is very hard for me because I like to spread out. Aaron is constantly telling me to move over, and if he gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, he often comes back to find that I have taken over the whole bed. We also have some problems deciding what to watch on tv. Usually I like to watch my girl-y shows and he wants to play Halo. Aaron also has a habit of wearing clothes a few hours, taking them off and leaving them all in a chair in the bedroom. His stack of clothes just grows and grows until finally I get annoyed and start putting stuff in the hamper.

But living with a boy isn't all bad. It's nice to get to see Aaron everyday, even if it's only for a few minutes. It's nice to be able to cuddle whenever I want, and it's nice to have a roommate I actually like!:) Plus Aaron usually helps me out with the cooking, cleaning and laundry, and he's one of the best dishwashers I've ever met. I love living with Aaron and I'm glad we decided to move in together and I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives hogging the bed:)

Stupid City of Oxford

Today was my court date for my accident. I get there at about 9:45 to find a courtroom full of, to put it nicely, white trash. (There was someone there wearing pajama pants!!!!) I figured when they told me my time was at 10am, that it would be only me, but apparently half of Oxford had the same time. At 10:05 some guy comes to the front of the room and says that if you need to pay for a ticket you can come up and get that now. So I figured I'd see if I'm able to do that because who knows how long it's going to take them to get through all of these people, and I had class at 11:30. My ticket was $60 plus $90 in court costs. Needless to say, I'm pretty angry. I even asked the cop when I got in my accident if I could just pay it and he said no, everyone has to go to court to pick up their tickets. (so they can charge you for court costs!) It's just Oxford's way of squeezing as much money out of people as possible. Grrrrrr.

On a happy note, Aaron and I are getting married 7 months from today!! :) It's weird to think that exactly 7 months ago we were getting engaged. Hopefully these next 7 months go as quickly as the past 7 months have! I can't wait for us to be the Trick-Sebourns! haha jk. I want to hypenate both our names so we can have cool initials (CATS for me and ALTS for him), but Aaron says no :( What a party pooper!

Family Weekend

It's weekends like this that make me wish weekends would never end. Our weekend actually started on Thursday when we went over to some friends' apartment to watch The Office which wasn't on because of the vice-president debate. Instead we spent the night watching Friends (obviously I was happy!) and playing games. It's funny how games can bring out the dumb in people. :) My favorite quote of the night came from Amanda while playing catchphrase. The clue was "you wear it on your graduation cap." Amanda's guess? "MISTLETOE!" haha! Needless to say she wasn't a very big help to our team..
Aaron and I spent Friday night at home, which consisted of me going to bed and my normal ridiculously early bedtime and Aaron staying up until all hours of the night playing Halo.
This weekend at Miami was "Family Weekend" so of course my parents came for a visit!:) They got here at about 11:30 and we went out to Butterfield Farm (where Aaron works) so my mom could stock up on apple cider and delicious bread! After Aaron got off work we went home and Mel, Noah, baby Eden and puppy Saul arrived! We decided to walk uptown to get some lunch and then show everyone around campus. Around 4ish Harold and Janice plus Brianna, Grayson and the exchange student showed up. We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting, watching football and eating:) Everyone left around 6:30ish and Aaron and I headed to Bdubs to watch the Ohio State game with friends.
Sunday Aaron works all day, so I'm usually left alone to entertain myself, but luckily today my cousin, her husband and their 4 kids came down for a visit. My cousin and her husband actually met at Miami (they're Miami mergers!! haha) so it was fun getting to show the kids around where their parents met. We started out by going to Butterfield where Aaron took us on a super fun hayride that ended with a visit to the cows! Then I got dragged around by the two big kids ("Follow me Carolyn, follow me!") to find the two perfect pumpkins (of course they wanted the 100ish pound ones! haha). We went to the bookstore so all the kids could get Miami t-shirts and then had lunch/dinner and walked around campus so they could get some family pictures. I'm so glad they came for a visit! I always have a blast with those kids and I miss them so much when I'm at school. They are definitely 4 of the funniest kids I know!