Tea Time

On Saturday Kerriann, Christiane and I went to Aunt Sherrie's house for a tea party!

I really felt spoiled after eating this delicious meal.  Aunt Sherrie was so accommodating of my crazy gluten and dairy free diet, yet everything still tasted amazing.  She made a white bean soup, tea sandwiches (on GF bread) and dairy and gluten free chocolate cookies.  Cooking for myself every day really makes me appreciate having someone else's home cooked meal.  Why does it always taste better when someone else makes it for you?  Has anyone else noticed that?  Anyways... I am definitely going to be asking for the soup and cookie recipes for the future.

After tea, we decided to take a trip to the game farm since the weather was so beautiful.  

For those of you who are not from WV, the game farm is a sort of wildlife preserve (I'm not sure what they technically call it) that has animals that are native to WV, they are just fenced in in their natural surroundings.  Kerriann went the previous weekend with Aunt Sherrie and Uncle John and was excited to be going back again so soon.

All three of us had a great time with Uncle John and Aunt Sherrie.  It is so nice living close to them again!

8 weeks!

We're eight weeks in!

I'm not going to lie and tell you that today was another great day, because despite the fact that it was 70 degrees and sunny, it wasn't.  I don't know what it was, but I've just been in a funk the past couple of days.  Maybe it's the fever and sore throat from over the weekend still dragging me down.  Maybe it's the presentation due Thursday and the portfolio due for my Leadership Minor capstone due tomorrow that I still have yet to assemble.  Or maybe it's just the fact that life can be so lonely during deployments, even when you're surrounded by people all day.  

It's probably just the fact that Kerriann didn't adjust her sleep cycles whatsoever due to the time change so we've been up at 6am the past two days (after falling asleep around midnight).  I'm really hoping that if I give her another few days she'll adapt.  Either that or we're moving from an 8pm to a 7pm bedtime.  Mommy needs her rest, too.

But enough about all of that.  I've been a total slacker the past week in the post department so I need to do some catching up.

My cousin Chris' birthday was Nov 5th, so we had plans for him and my cousin Brandon to stay with me over the weekend to celebrate and attend the WVU vs Louisville football game.  Unfortunately, the slightly sore throat I woke up with on Tuesday progressed into a much worse sore throat and by Friday evening I felt like I was coming down with a fever.  We had already made plans for Kerriann to stay with my Aunt Sherrie and Uncle John since I was going to have a full house, so we met them for dinner at Cheddars.  Christiane came along too, and after dinner we went back to my house to hang out until it was time to go out.  I just didn't think I could handle it, so I dropped off the others and went to bed.  I didn't really sleep that night, but there wasn't much more I could do than lay in bed.

By Saturday morning my fever broke (seriously, probably the shortest fever I've ever had, but I'm not complaining) and I decided I'd go over to Christiane's with everyone to tailgate before the game.  

I had a ticket, but just didn't feel well enough to go.  I hung out with her while the guys attended the game.  Unfortunately WVU did not do well... so after the game we went home to sleep off the loss.

Once we were all feeling a little more rested, we had a nice dinner at Outback for Chris' birthday (they have a gluten free menu-yay!).  Then we met up with a few friends and went out for a couple of hours.  

I played the DD role since I wasn't feeling 100%, but I still had a great time.  It was so nice to visit with my cousins and have their company all weekend.  I wish they could have stayed in town longer!

I spent most of Sunday working on my presentation that's due Thursday.  

After I'd logged a few hours working on it, I went to drop off Chris and pick up Kerriann.  It was so great to be reunited with her after the weekend!  

Halloween Weekend

Again, it has been way too long since my last post!  Wednesday-Friday is always so crazy for me, and then if I have anything at all going on over the weekend I feel like I look at the calendar and suddenly it's Sunday night again.  I guess that is a good thing though, that time has been flying by lately.  Before I know it it will be Tuesday afternoon and we'll be at the seven week mark.  And since Kevin left a couple of weeks later than the rest of the guys, we are technically two months into the deployment, which is awesome!  I feel like we are finally starting to make some progress with our countdown.  Only ten months, at most, to go!

On Friday evening my mom and brother, Shannon, arrived at our house for the weekend.  I was so excited to have them here to keep us company for a couple of days.  I attempted to make my first real gluten free meal for them.  I was about 75% successful.  I made gluten free pasta for myself and Kerriann, regular for everyone else only because I ran out of GF, homemade meat sauce, GF french bread and a salad.  Everything was delicious, with the exception of the bread.

I still have no clue what went wrong because I followed the directions to a T, other than not using the "heavy mixer" that it called for (maybe one day I will have my beautiful Kitchenaid that I've been dreaming of, and then I can make homemade bread).  Oh well, everyone still left the table with a full stomach, so I guess that's all that counts!  After dinner, I made an apple spice cake (gluten AND dairy free) and it was DELICIOUS.

I have eaten over half of the pan by myself since then... oops!  I'm probably going to be making it pretty often from here on out, so get excited to try it if you'll be stopping by my house anytime in the near future!

Our original plan for Saturday was to go to "Zoo Boo" at the Pittsburgh Zoo, but when we woke up to snow, we decided we'd just do a little shopping instead.

We spent the morning relaxing and then picked up Christiane and headed to the South Hills Village mall in the afternoon.  Kerriann was sort of out of control for most of the trip so I didn't accomplish much, but we did get her some new tennis shoes since she has out grown both of her pairs.  I always told myself I would never by my child velcro light up shoes, especially with a character on them, but Kerriann is now the proud new owner of exactly that.

She loves Dora so much that I just couldn't help but give in.  She has been dancing around in her Dora light up shoes ever since!  I think the $20 was well worth it in the end for her happiness.  I'll try to get a picture of her in them soon.

After we were thoroughly worn out and starving, we had dinner at Red Robin.

This was my first time dining there, and I was excited to find that they actually had a gluten free menu.  I had a great Avo-Cobb-O salad, and I'm pretty sure everyone else enjoyed their dinner just as much.

We spent today doing Halloween activities, but that's for another post! :)

Weekend Re-cap

Kerriann and I spent our weekend visiting my parents.  It was exactly what I needed after such a crazy, stressful week!

Here's our visit in iPhone pics...

Kerriann's first homework assignment

Coloring at Grandma's 

A little mid-morning tea party

I love fall

Kerriann's first cinnamon roll... 

She actually wasn't into it and left almost the whole thing!

Cookout at my dad's on Saturday afternoon

Chris teaching Kerriann how to play badminton 

All snuggled up after bath time

Sunday morning... I was not ready for temps in the 30's...

Misty morning

The kittens are getting so big!

Playing before church

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!

Weekend Re-cap

This weekend was extremely uneventful in our household!  It has been raining almost non-stop since my last post (and even before, I guess I should say since Friday afternoon).  I am so tired of this wet weather, but it looks like it should be clearing up in the next day or two so we have that to look forward to.  We have just been doing what we can to keep busy inside, including having dance parties in the kitchen, playing dress-up, watching tv, and reading books in the "castle."

(The above photo is mainly for Kevin, because Kerriann is always talking about her new sparkly shoes that he didn't get to see before he left!)

Yesterday we didn't do anything!  Kerriann and I went to Christiane's for a couple of hours in the afternoon just to get out of the house, but there wasn't anything too exciting going on there.  The homecoming game still went on even though it poured all day, and I'm happy to say that my friend and sorority sister Julie Diamond was crowned WVU homecoming queen for 2011.  She is such a beautiful girl inside and out, and she definitely deserved this honor!  She and many of my other sisters were out campaigning every time I walked to class the past couple of weeks.  I actually used their campaigning for one of my photojournalism assignments because I needed to get shots of people interacting.

Congratulations again, Julie!

photo via

This morning we went to mass for the first time since moving here.  This is really the first time that we've had a chance between moving in, traveling, and having company.  We chose St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church after a recommendation from Kevin's Uncle Paul.  I really enjoyed the mass there and Kerriann did a great job.  The church has a very untraditional set up and the seats are arranged stadium style.  I wasn't sure how I would like that, but it was actually really nice because we could still see and hear everything from the back row (which is unusual when you're short!).  I was really hoping that they would have a nursery since the church is so big, but unfortunately they didn't.  I did notice that there were a lot of babies and younger kids though so hopefully we can make some friends.  We are going to become members at St. Francis and try to attend as much as possible.

Well... I have put off studying long enough... now that Kerriann is in bed and my daily post has been finished it's time to get moving!  Here are a couple more photos of Kerriann having lunch this afternoon after church.  Peanut butter sandwiches have definitely become the go-to lunch food in our house lately.