Busy Pittsburgh Life

First off, I love this picture of Connor wearing Jeremy's socks. :)  His face is so cute and it's an expression he  wears often.

Well, we are still alive and kickin' over here.  It's been an eventful month.  I flew out to California one weekend for my Grandma's funeral, Jeremy flew to Connecticut for a couple days for a job interview (yes, already!), we've been to a Pirates game, a Dean's receiption, the temple, and Jeremy goes to Indianapolis and California this week.  Whew.  I'm exhausted.

So, in no particular order, here are some pictures documenting our fun.

Jeremy took this when I was gone.  These boys have been playing so well together lately!  Hooray!

And I took the next two when Jeremy was gone.  Playing baseball:

And playing with their new IKEA table.  I've had my eye on this for a year now and finally got it.  They got some belated birthday money in the mail from my other sweet grandma, so it was perfect!  IKEA is really close to the airport,so after we dropped off Jeremy we did some shopping and had lunch.  Little did I know it was also kids-eat-free day.  Woohoo!  

 Pirates game!  Unfortunately Jeremy missed the game since he was in Connecticut, but the boys and I still went with our friends the Arnetts and it was great fun!  The school had super awesome tickets for $5 that included $10 to use at the concessions!  Awesome!  So we enjoyed hot dogs, french fries, and milkshakes.  You know, really healthy stuff.

 Connor kept his hat on the whole time!  We got these hats at a school-sponsored game last year, they also came with our $5 tickets.  Glad that hefty tuition is helping us get discounts somewhere. ;)

 One angle of the view from the stadium.  It was fun to be there when it got dark.  Pittsburgh looks so beautiful at night with all the lights along the river, and we don't see it too often like that.

And another angle.  (I stole this from facebook Mary!) Yea for friends!

 Last Saturday we went to the temple.  I always seem to forget our camera when we go, so I was glad I finally remembered it this time.  I told the boys to hold hands when they crossed the street and they kept holding them when we got there.  Love it!

 It was pretty windy...

 And last night, I was so PROUD of my handsome husband as we attended a Dean's Reception and awards night for the MBA students.  Jeremy received an award/scholarship for "Excellence in the field of Production/Operations Management".  They basically gave an award to one person in each field (entrepreneurship, finance, etc.) and a few for high GPAs.  I was so proud of him!  He talked to one of the professors after who was on the board who chose him, and he said it was an easy decision.  :)  Go Jeremy!!

 They had a nice reception after.  It was in the Carnegie Music Hall which is a beautiful building we hadn't been in yet.

 And we were proud of our friends the Arnetts for Tom getting an award too!  He had the highest GPA in the class!  (Yep, stole another one Mary)

There are about 200 people in the class and they gave out 11 awards - and two of the three LDS guys in the class got one. :)  We were proud to represent!

 Anyway, it was a nice evening to spend together, especially since Jeremy's leaving on Wednesday.  He's attending an MBA career fair in Indianapolis, then flying from there to California for his sister's sealing, then flying back Sunday night.  The week he gets back we have our ultrasound and he has three more interviews on campus.  Ohhhh boy!!!

Labor Day!

We had such a wonderful Labor Day yesterday.  Jeremy took the whole day off from school work (yippee!) and we had a great family fun day.

We went up to Moraine State Park, located about 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh.  It was beautiful!!!  I love all the trees and rolling hills here.  Gorgeous.  So the weather forecast was looking terrible.  Every day leading up to the holiday it said it was going to rain pretty much all day.  We decided to brave it anyway, since the weather report is so hit-and-miss here anyway and usually when it rains it doesn't rain all that long.  Well, we woke up at 6:30 Monday morning and it was a gorgeous morning!  I checked the weather again (after checking it late the night before) and it was all clear!  Ha!  Good thing we don't make plans around the weather report. :)

So our friends, the Arnetts, met at our house and we all drove up to the State Park.  Tom is in the MBA program with Jeremy and they have 2 little boys too, so we do a lot with them. :) (Yea!) We had done some research beforehand and saw that Labor Day was free fishing day at all the state parks (meaning, you don't need a license), and that they have rods you can borrow also for free!  It was perfect.  We got there early so we'd be sure to get some, and sure enough, we got two, bought some worms and headed out to the lake.  It was really just a perfect morning.  It was cool and clear and we were the only ones at our little spot for awhile.  We didn't really expect to catch anything, but we thought it would be fun.  We ended up catching 6 fish all together!  They were all very small, but it was still exciting.  Eli had a great time and I think Jeremy was the most excited of all.

Giddy Jeremy.

 Ah, nature!!

 First catch!  Just a little guy. :)

Love.

 Tom's boys weren't too interested when he caught the first one, but Tom was excited!  They eventually thought it was fun...

 Tom and Moses.

 Another one!  Eli actually touched it.  I was impressed. :)
 Mary over yonder.

 Moses took it upon himself to return all the rocks from the shore to the lake.

 After fishing for awhile we headed up to the north shore of the lake for some "beach" time.  They had some sand and the boys had a blast playing in the sand and swimming.  

 

We then barbequed some hot dogs, enjoyed a delicious lunch, and then swam some more.

 
 Connor venturing out.  This kid is crazy in the water.  He loves it and has NO fear.  He went in head first 3 times and we had to retrieve him.  We discovered that he actually knows to hold his breath now though.  We'd pull him out and he wouldn't cough or sputter or really look disturbed at all.  He was havin' a ball. Oh boy.

 We left all tuckered out around 2:30, feeling very satisfied and happy with what a success the day had been.  Jeremy kept saying all day, "This is so fun! What a great day!"  It was cute.  It was so nice to just get out and do something together in the outdoors. (Can you tell we're not missing the southern heat/bugs/humidity?) :) We loved it!