A Tale of 2 Celebrations!

This past week, I got to celebrate some pretty exciting things! 1. Julia, Ryan, and I all finished up our first year of teaching, in-service days and all! 2. I celebrated my birthday!

The three of us (Julia, Ryan, and I) started out this crazy year moving out here with each other, so it was only fitting we celebrate our accomplishment together! We have been each others' support systems and family this past year. There have been exciting and amazing moments, and moments that were challenging. Through it all, we made it! Year one, done.

We celebrated by going to a new pizza place and getting ice cream afterwards. A bit glutinous, yes, but we just finished a year of teaching! We figured we could splurge a little...

Saturday also happened to be my birthday, which we celebrated Friday night as well as with some shopping Saturday. I was gearing up for a pretty mellow and uneventful day, then, lo and behold through the wonders of Facebook, I discovered my church from Wisconsin, Bethel OPC, was sending their youth group to Washington DC for a mission trip. They just happened to be stopping for the night in the Pittsburgh area!

Julia and I met up with them and had an awesome time! Three of the leaders who were along on the trip were former teachers of Julia and myself, so it was really fun to discuss teacher stories! They also somehow got an ice cream cake to the hotel and surprised me with it! So sweet of them. My cousin Jeremy was along on the trip as well, so it was a great little reunion. We shared our limited knowledge of the Pittsburgh culture and also enjoyed the Wisconsin accents of all who were visiting!

An oreo ice cream cake. Seriously the best thing ever!

More cousins!

To top it off, Sunday we talked with the husband of one of the teachers from my school and he shared with us his love for....Culvers! We literally talked about it for 10 minutes. It pretty much made my day! And made me crave Culvers.

The whole weekend made me grateful for my life here as well as making me very excited to go to Wisconsin soon! Summer has already been so delightful and relaxing, for which I am very thankful! Now I'm looking forward to taking some time to visit the great state of Wisconsin and see family, friends....and to satisfy the craving for Culvers!