Adventures in Babysitting!!

This weekend I had to watch my two cousins, Jake, who is 11,and Pete, who is 8. With saying that, we all know how boys that age can be... they love to wrestle, play video games, and be really loud! But, there is never a dull moment!

My adventure began Friday at 5pm when I had to pick them up at school, but it couldn't be anything before 5 so Jake could play in "game club!" We head home to drop off our stuff and have Charlie(my puppy) and Raisin(their dog) meet. I had planned a night out with the boys, dinner and a movie, but they wanted to see "Hoodwinked," and I wanted to see "Nanny McPhee," needless to say they won. We ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen in Easton and then walked around to the video games store so they could play a quick game. Then we headed up to watch our movie and of course they both have to have their own popcorn and drink~ NO Sharing allowed! The movie was cute but it was very repetitive, they showed the same scene 4 times over~ they had to find out who was the goodies bandit!! I won't go into anymore detail in case someone wants to go see it!

On Saturday my mom, sister, and gram came down to hangout and go shopping. But first Pete had a soccer game and Jake didn't want to go, so my gram stayed home with him. So the girls went shopping and ate lunch/dinner at the Cheesecake Factory~ our new favorite place to eat! And, of course we had to get cheesecake to go! By the time we got home, we were all so tired and just wanted to sleep. Around 10 everyone heads up to bed, and I set the house alarm and tell everyone not to open any doors unless they tell me to disarm the security system.

Sunday morning my mom goes to take the dogs out and what does she do~ sets the alarm off, so anyone that was asleep~ ISN"T now. The alarms sounds and EVERY light in the house comes on(also controlled on a pad), and the phone rings~ its the security watch people checking to make sure everything is ok and that I am not a crook. We all got a good laugh out of that one!

Now I am home for the night and totally ehausted, so is Charlie! Watching two kids, and two dogs in one weekend~ is plenty excitement for me. Nighty night!

In the Picture: My cousin at the end of the drive way waving goodbye to my mom, sister, and gram! So precious!

Miss America 2006

Deidre Downs crowned the New Miss America 2006, Miss Oklahoma, Jennifer Berry last night live on CMT (Country Music Television). She walked the runway to the famous Bert Park's song "There she is." They had to change the song from saying "Atlantic City" because the competition is no longer held there. They moved the competition from September to January, ABC to CMT, and the winner receives $30,000 instead of the past prize amount of $50,000.

My top choices for Miss America were Miss North Carolina, Brooke McLaurin, Miss Texas, Morgan Matlock (top 10 semi-finalist), and Miss District of Columbia, Shannon Schambeau (4th runner-up). So I had some pretty good picks but just didn't pick the winner.

While watching the Miss America pageant with my roommates we decided to have a Miss 47 E. 12th St! We will have to do the same preliminaries too~ Interview, Swimsuit, Talent, and Evening Gown. Most of the girls have decided that their talent portion will have something to do with beer!! So last night in the kitchen we all did our introduction stating our name, where we are from, and what we are studying in school. Cat was hilarious because she was drunk(for the 8th night in a row) and she was putting her hips into her introduction!

After we were done playing Miss America, we headed for the bar. We had an exceptionally large group last night because Sarah M. was back in town for the weekend and my cousin Johnny came down to visit some of his friends too! We ended up sitting in a booth with some guys that Cathy and Courtney befriended! We stayed there until 2am or so and walked down the Cain's to get some famous chicken fingers(last night was my first time there)! It was good, but everyone talked it up so much that I was expecting so much more.

The weekend wasn't over yet~ we all went to Bob Evans this morning for breakfast/lunch! The best part of breakfast was the car ride home when we got to hear some embarrassing stories about Sarah's little sister! I seriously had tears running down my face! What a wonderful weekend!

In the Pictures: Top Left Picture (L-R): Natalie, Kaci, and Cat after the Miss America pageant

Top Right picture (L-R): Kaci and Cat~ posing for the camera!

The Nuthouse~

Last night the girls and I headed out for a night of dancing and drinking! I, of course only had 2 small beers(6 oz) while everyone else was drunk because they started playing Power Hour at 8pm. So they had a good 1 1/2 hours on me. I met up with the girls at Kronik K's house for a little pre-party~ more like sitting on the couch talking to the girls! Unfortunately, we didn't make a GOAL for the night like we usually do, so I think it was just to get drunk and dance! Courtney definately took care of that for all of us this time!!! So at 10:30 we left to hit up The Nuthouse...their was no one there at all. So we just sat there and waited for the rest of our crew to show up, we went in 2 groups...Group 1~Kaci, Kelly, Jackie, Cat, Courtney, and JR., Group 2~ Annie, Sarah, Debbie, Aaron, Kronik K, Ty, and Moore...we some how lost Natalie?!?! By the time the 2nd group showed up we were ready to dance, so we did the UNTHINKABLE~ we got in the cages. Yes, I know it doesn't sound to classy, but we had to do it just once or twice...maybe we got up there 3 times!! LOL. At one point in the night everyone scattered to different places and we were just walking in circles to find each other. Courtney disappeared around 11:30 and when I get home a 1/2 hour later she was standing outside talking with the neighbors because she was locked out of the house. Another night with my girls and having a ball my senior year of College!

In the Picture (L-R): Jackie, Kaci, Cat (get down girls)

OSU BASKETBALL BABY

Tonight the girls and I went to watch OSU vs. WISCONSIN basketball game ....and we WON!!!! The final score was OSU 77 Wisconsin 67. We had the best seats ever~ they were on the floor behind the basket and to the side a little~ fabulous! The traffic to the game was unbelieveable, we couldn't find a place to park and when we did, it was 2 miles away and we had to pay $7, we should have just walked from the house and we probably would have gotten home earlier too because it took us about a half hour just to get out of the parking lot. We got free shirts that said "Ohio State Basketball Buckeye Nut House 2005-2006," they are great! American Eagle Outfitters sponsored them so their logo is on the back~and surprisingly they are soft, not stiff like most other shirts that you get! Ok, enough rambling about the free stuff~ back to the game...Terence Dials had a great game, he dominated the court exceptionally well. Here is a quote from him after the game! "Every win is important, especially on your home court. I'm just glad our team came out and played hard and got a win. They're a great team. Our guys came ready to play and got something done today." Terence was being very humble, he played great and beat the No. 1 ranked team in the Big Ten!

Here is a quote from Bo Ryan (Wisconsin's Head Coach) on the last few minutes when they realized they couldn't beat OHIO STATE. "Basketball is a streaky game. They all went in. We need to guard better. We went some stretches where we didn't get that."

Luckily we didn't have many times in the game when we were worried about winning or not, we stayed ahead most of the game and I was glad to see our boys pull off a good game especially after being defeated by Michigan State! Way to go boys!!!!

In the Picture: (L-R) Sarah, Kaci, Kelly, and Cathy

All Night Volleyball

On Saturday night my hometown rec center held their annual All Night Volleyball Tournament! The tournament started at 10pm, well was suppose to start at 10, but was about a 1/2 hour late. There were 2 divisions~ Power and Semi Power, and within these divisions there were 9 power teams and 13 semi-power teams. This is the first year that I played Semi Power, it was fun but the competition isn't there like in the Power division. A team can play with as little as 4 people or as many as they want. One team had 10 people, of course only 6 can play at a time but you can rotate everyone in and out. I don't like to be taken out of a game, so I would rather play with 4 people than 10. That's just my competitive side coming out...I want to feel in control on the court and if I am not out there then I can't help with anything. I know some people say you can help cheer your team on from the sidelines~that just doesn't do it for me, I can cheer for my team on the court just as well! Back to the tournament~ we split with every team except one (Darren's team) and I blame that on the ref, he screwed us out of 2 points when it was neck and neck and then it was possible game point. Oh we played to 2 games to 25 points by rally scoring~ you might have needed the information to understand! So we lost that game when we should have won. The very last game we played was my cousin Johnny's team and at that point I was so tired but I had to stay awake so everything that happened was hilarious and I couldn't stop laughing...that could have been because I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before and my body just wanted sleep but I forced it to stay awake so it went into a crazy loopy mode. Well we split with his team and that tied us for the tournament, but neither team really wanted to play anymore~everyone was tired and sore, so after the game both teams just left. I would have stayed but it was 7am at this point and half of my team took off. So my sister and I packed our stuff up and headed for home! For the teams that stayed and played~ 1st place received $90 and a t-shirt, 2nd place received $45 and a t-shirt, and 3rd place got t-shirts! It was fun to play and see some people that we haven't seen in a while~ like my good friend Kelly(who just showed up to see one of her friends from out of town that was playing)! Next time I play in an all day or night volleyball tournament~ I will remember to stretch before playing and make sure I really warm up my body up because yesterday and today I felt like I was beaten with a baseball bat all over my body. Maybe thats why my coaches always stressed to me to STRETCH!!! Maybe I should have listened!

Weekend FUN

On friday night we all decided to hit the bars, well just one bar~ Panini's!!! But before we could go out we had to play some drinking games. So we played quarters where little Sara got her butt whooped, then we played a quick game of beer pong. So at about 11:30pm we decided to walk 20 steps to get to Panini's, we seriously live that close to a bar~ its fabulous! Our one goal of the night was we couldn't leave until someone puked! LOL. Let's just say that Cat took care of that, but not until she had a few shots~ Sex on the Beach, Rumplemints, Buttery Nipple and a couple beers! Everyone knows that I can not drink alcohol at all, but I managed to get wasted that night and had a BLAST doing it!

On to Saturday night~ I was really not in the mood to get drunk, for some reason I have a hard time drinking two times in the weekend. So we went to a house party and I started off drinking water, but that quickly changed. I had one Bud Light and that was plenty for me. Saturday night was just as entertaining as Friday night~ Kelly and ShakeMaster(Ben) began having a limbo contest! Ben put up a great fight, but Kelly took gymnastics for 13 years and kicked his ass! God I love my housemates! I left the party at 1:30 only to come home to a house full of boys that I didn't know. Kinda nervous, I said "Hi, who are you guys?" They said we are Ricky's friends~well little Ricky is Annie's borther! I actually talked to them for about 20 minutes just to find out that one of them puked all over the front steps! I wasn't too worried because it has happened before and they were nice enough to throw some water to help wash it away! UGH, I hate throwing up. So on that note, I hope everyone had a good weekend, puke free!

In the picture (L-R)(front):Debbie, Natalie, Kelly, Courtney, Annie (Back): Jackie, Sarah, Kaci, Cathy, Shakemaster

~New Year's Eve~

I hope everyone had a great New Year's Eve! I had a great time hanging out with all my girls! And those who didn't see me out that night missed Kaci DRUNK! I know it only happens twice a year, but it was a good time! It was so great to hang out with everyone that I don't get to see that much. And when the ball dropped~I gave one of my best friends(Katie) a hug! And I am sure I gave everyone else a hug too! The night pretty much consisted of Nicki, Abby and I running back and forth from Charlie's Bar to the Office Bar and to Amy's. I am so thankful for all the friends that I have, they made my year in one day! As for my new years resolution~ mine is to be HAPPY and HEALTHY! This year I have decided to make something that I know I can keep....I will find what's best for Kaci and if it isn't right for me~ I will let it go! Tears my fill my eyes~ but I will stand back up! This is the year where I will decide everything thats best for me and hopefully make the right decisions! I will set myself free and try my best to become the person that I am deep down inside. I hope everyone has a blessed and Happy New Year! Stay Positive and keep your head up!



In the picture (L-R): Kaci, Kelly, Nicki, Abby, Amy