What a Weekend!

I had such a great weekend.  It was definitely everything I wanted it to be.  Friday morning was really stressful.  I got up early to take my mid-term before everyone else so I could make it to the airport on time.  I went to my professor's office at 8am where she told me to meet her.  Nobody was there.  I knocked on her door and.... no answer.  I panicked.  I called Daniel, but he was asleep so he wasn't much help.  I called my mom and she calmed me down.  She told me to leave a note with my cell phone number so she knows I was there and she can call me and tell me to come if she's just a few minutes late.  I waited until 8:15 and she finally showed up.  I was so glad because I knew I would be worrying about it all weekend if I didn't take the test then.  I think I did really well too.  Then I went back to Daniel's and grabbed my stuff.  His fraternity brother drove me to the airport and that was it!  My dad picked me up from the airport.  We stopped at In-N-Out (I really miss it) for lunch.  My mom made a manicure appointment for us (she knows me too well) so we did that and then my entire family came over for dinner.

That evening, Mom took out great grandma's wedding rings which she finally got from Aunt Shirley.  The engagement ring has one large diamond in the middle and four little ones on the sides, and the wedding band has nine small diamonds on it.  They decided to split up the diamonds among the three great-grandchildren (me, my sister, and our cousing Amy).  To be fair, they thought that they couldn't give me the large diamond and not Nicole, so Amy get the big one and the small ones will be split between Nicole and me.  She told me that her and Julie (Daniel's mom) went to the jewelry store last weekend to see what they could do with the small diamonds.  Julie also has a diamond necklace that she offerred us for the engagement ring.  So I guess they decided to use Julie's diamond for the engagement ring and we can use the small diamonds on Great Grandma's ring for the wedding band.  I think.  They weren't really clear on what they decided.  

The big news that day is that my brother was enlisting in the army.  He left at 5am and got home at 6pm.  He had to go through a bunch of tests and physicals and stuff and was sworn in.  He was exhausted when he got home.  My grandparents were there and Uncle George and Aunt Shirley.  They were all happy to see me, and I was really happy to see them too.  We had a delicious (home-cooked) dinner.  After dinner me and my mom watched Mamma Mia.  It's the perfect mother daughter movie.    I was falling asleep so we didn't quite finish it.

The next morning I went with my mom to a UMW thing at church.  They had a guest speaker come and talk about "Humane Borders" which is the group that puts out water jugs for immigrants crossing the border in the dessert.  His talk was really interesting regardless of your view on immigration.  Then we left to go downtown and have lunch with Sarah.  It was so great to see her even just for a few hours.  It's important to me to keep up with my childhood friends.  And the lunch was delicious!  Lucky us that Sarah chose spaghetti factory to work at.  It was so yummy!  Then mom and I went home and made up a couple dinners for Chris and Aimee.  We went over to their house to meet their brand new baby girls.  It was perfect because me and my mom got to sit there and each hold one for hours.  Olivia was asleep practically the entire time and Sarah was making all these funny faces.  I love how her little head fit right in the palm of my hand.  But, like Aimee said, they're a little boring at this age.  They're really cute and all, but I remember when Tyler started crawling and walking and he said and did the funniest things.  So I can't wait until they're a little older like this summer.  Then I went over to Daniel's houes to have dinner with his family.  Evan was there with his girlfriend Kristy and her mom.  We had another delicious dinner.  I always enjoy spending time with his parents.  They have interesting views on things that are usually different from my view.  Julie refused to give me anymore information about the diamond or anything.  She wants it to be a surprise, which I appreciate.  I want it to be a surprise too!

I fully intended to go to church on Sunday, but I couldn't get up.  Too early.  We made plans to go to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa so that Aunt Kathy who is in town from Rhode Island could see me.  She is really old and practically deaf, so it's difficult to hold a conversation, but it was nice to see her anyways.  After we ate, everyone left but my grandparents, me, and my mom, to discuss the Europe funding situation.  After a long conversation in which my grandpa made it clear that he doesn't want to make this "too easy" on us and "spoil" me, it was agreed that they would match whatever Daniel and I managed to save towards the trip.  That's a huge relief and very exciting!  That means we are already halfway to our goal and we still have 6 months to save!  Grandma and Grandpa told me that they love Daniel and they think it's great that I have someone like him to go with me to Europe.  They think this will be a wonderful educational experience (not just the trip, but also saving money and learning how to search for the best prices, and planning the trip).  So it's really going to happen!  After lunch we went to Beth's wedding shower.  I was so happy that I got to go to one.  I felt so bad for Beth because it's really awkward being the center of attention like that.  It makes me really not want to have a wedding shower.  But she got so many gifts that I would have loved.  Daniel and I had to spend so much money in August just to be able to bake cookies or cook pasta and we got all our dishes from Goodwill.  Someday we will get all brand new stuff for our wedding shower too.  And I got to see Tyler!  I miss him so much sometimes and I cannot believe that he is already 4.  He's not even a baby or a toddler anymore, he's a kid.  Weird.  And I must say it's kind of strange seeing him call Beth "mommy."  After that we went to the Cylwik's house to have dinner and talk about our summer plans.  Their son just proposed to his girlfriend after dating for 2 months.  They're crazy if you ask me.  But I'm probably a bad person to ask.

So back to my brother, he took a test this weekend that told the army that he is able to learn languages well enough to put him into the Arabic program at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.  I guess it's a pretty prestigious program and he had to score really high to get into it.  But he did, and he's off to basic training on March 10.  He will go to South Carolina for 9 weeks and then to Monterey to go to the DLI to learn Arabic for a whole year.  So I won't see him a whole lot in the next year.  But he's really excited about it.  So I'm excited for him.

Now I have a ton of classes to make up and homework to do and I still don't know what I got on any of my mid-terms.  I don't really want to know.  I don't think I did well on many of them.  This quarter is probably my hardest yet.  And it just gets harder.