New Addition to the Family!

My mom and Jim welcomed a new family member in October for Jim's birthday. He weighed in at 2.9 pounds when they brought him home. His name is Frank (after the Men in Black dog) and he's a pug. I like to call him Francis or Frankenstein and he likes to chew on my shoes. He's so sweet and cuddly! I love him : )Just trying to figure out where he is... at this point he was afraid to walk on the linoleum or hardwood floorsGetting a little more adventurous and coming to see me : )

Posing for the camera. I love how he sits crooked like that. He's a keeper

Day out with my Sister and Brother

On October 18th, I treated my sister and brother to lunch and an afternoon at the public museum in Grand Rapids. They have an exhibit going through January on the science of solving crimes. The exhibit has a crime scene set up with clues and stuff to help you figure out whodunit.

It all started with getting mug shots taken. As you can see, we're all very sad.
Lindsey and Justin getting friendly with a witness they're interviewing. They missed the sign that said "don't touch the display". oooops
They projected a real autopsy onto a plastic body. It was intense and very lifelike!
Checking to see if they came to the right conclusions... They did! Super sleuths!

Later on throughout the museum exhibits- Justin and Lindsey had some fun taking random pictures. Gun show...

Stop looking at me swan...

Yes... Picking a moose's nose. Only my brother and sister would do something like that... and let me take a pic.

Homecoming Parade!

October 10th was the IHS homecoming parade! Since I work downtown again, I have prime seating (not that it's ever that crowded). The parade was actually about 10 minutes long, which is probably twice as long as it was when I was in high school. It was nice to see the elementary schools and clubs get involved, too.

Justin being too cool for a pic

Haha I gotcha!
Bulldogs! Go Dawgs!
There's Ali carrying sign for the high school marching band!

Of course we lost, but it was a fun time to go to the game. You know you're old when they start asking homecoming trivia questions over the PA system about the year you graduated! And the sad part is that I couldnt even remember who the homecoming king and queen were that year. I finally figured it out with the help of my sister. Man, 5 years out of school and I feel SO old!

FINALLY catching up on my blogging

Ok so I'm seriously lame. I havent blogged since the end of September! oops! I've really been busy though, so cut me some slack. Well, needless to say, lots has happened since the last post! I'll start out with October. My cousin Sam got married in October. She's two years younger than I am and so I felt like an old maid. Seriously though, I'm not even close to wanting to be married yet! Her colors were brown, cinnamon (a rusty orange), and ivory. It was BEAUTIFUL! My sister and cousins and I decided that we wanted to get more dressed up than normal, so we had a great time!

Lindsey, Steph (AKA Boobs) and Me
Me, Ali, and JustinComparing cleavage... I'm on the left of course

I went to the bathroom and came back with like 34 of these pictures on my camera!

Unfortunately, I dont have any pictures with the bride! For the dolla dance, my sister, my 3 cousins, and myself paid $5 (and I got to take all of the shots for the minors) and did a huge group dance with Sam. It was so fun...

And of course I have to welcome Kurt to the family! Here's a pic I scammed off Sam's facebook:

Another Update!

Can you believe that I'm already updating again! I know, it's a shocker! This weekend I had a lot of fun and was VERY busy! Friday night was just studying, laundry, and updating my blog. It wasn't that exciting. Saturday, I straightened my hair (an event in and of itself) and went to GR. I did some shopping for a new red purse (my favorite one broke) and supplies for my cousin's bachelorette party. After hitting up the mall I headed to Ashley's house to see Carter and Ashley before going downtown for dinner and drinks. Sunday I met up with Matt and his friend Tyler to see the GVSU production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was set to a Bollywood theme so I was a little nervous of what it was going to be like. I was very pleasantly surprised! The costuming, acting, and general production was amazing! Afterwards, I picked up my sister and had dinner with Matt and Tyler at Applebee's. Dinner was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime.

Here are some pics from the weekend! My camera died so I don't have that many : (

Sam with a wedding night gift ; )

"Good girls are made of sugar and spice - as for me I'm made of Vodka and Ice"

Me with the Bride to Be (Sam's had a few drinks at this point!)

And a few more at this point! Modeling one of her new pairs of panties in downtown GR.

Tailgating!

On September 20th Jenna and I met up to tailgate with Garrett and some of his friends at MSU. It was a BLAST! We kind of crashed their party so I'm very appreciative of them for taking care of us. When the game started, we went back to one of Garrett's friend's apartments to watch the game and hang out. Later on we attempted to go out in EL but Jenna and I ended up leaving before things got too crazy.

Jenna and I at MSU... and yes, I have drunk eyes.

Jenna playing catch phrase!

Drunk pic of Garrett and I

All in all, it was a great time and a beautiful day. Hopefully we can do it again soon!

This one's for you Carrie!

Wow... so yeah... I havent updated in quite awhile. I've been SO busy lately: Class three nights a week and still working over 30 hours at the bank. But enough excuses... So, to remind myself of everything I need to blog about, I decided to go back through my pictures from the summer. Here are a few pics from what I've been up to for the past three months:

I completely forgot about this picture and literally laughed out loud when I saw it on my computer. Let me explain... From the time I was a little girl, I loved the 10 days of summer when the Ionia Free Fair is in town. I used to show Jersey cattle with my family and 4H group until I was 12 and loved every minute of it. I also baked (something I haven't done since) and made crafts (some of which my step-mom still has on display at our house... bless her heart) and met up with friends that I saw only once a year. Needless to say, my family are some of the few Ionians who truly enjoy the fair.

This year we began a new tradition. I dont even remember how or why it happened, but we decided to do a picture scavenger hunt, complete with a 20+ item list and competitive teams. Some of the items on the list were: the biggest redneck, vomit (bonus points for catching someone in the act), and shortest man shorts. Above is the picture that my team took for the latter category. This was SO much fun for everyone involved! Next year we're going bigger and better so if you have any ideas for categories, let me know.

On August 1st, I saw Wicked with my friend Jenna and her mom. Here's a pic of us at dinner with Jenna's boyfriend's sister, Katie. We had a GREAT time! I can't even describe how much I loved that play!

August 22, the day of birthdays, was a fun night out with my friends. One of my bests, Jenna, shares her birthday with my sister, Lindsey, and about 10 other people I could list. This year, we met for wine at Jenna's apartment and then went out to the Riv in East Lansing. Above is a pic of (from left) Erin, Jenna, Me, and Jessica. We had SO much fun and got lots of free beer marketing swag.

Here's Jenna all decked out in her swag.

This is Jenna T and I. She moved to Indianapolis because she got a fancy engineering job and we all miss her : (

On Labor Day weekend, I went to visit Ashley, James and Carter in Grand Rapids for a little bit. It was a beautiful weekend and we took Carter to the Splash Park nearby. Here are a few pics from that weekend.
Gettin' a drink from the water sprayer thingy - he LOVED LOVED LOVED it here. It was SO fun to watch him have such a good time : )

Ok, I realize this is a little gross, but he's just so cute I couldnt resist!

Happy camper after playing in the water!

Much more interested in getting back in the water instead of sitting with his Auntie!

In September we had a Pit Reunion! The Pit is the place where the Ionia analysts at the bank used to sit, and when I started it consisted of myself, Garrett, and Carrie. Matt was there too, but in another office. I've become extremely good friends with each of them since I started working back in Ionia. Well, Garrett left to work in Troy about a year ago, and Matt and Carrie both spend the majority of their time in Grand Rapids at the Beltline. In other words, they LEFT ME! So, the night before an all employee meeting, we decided to take advantage of the fact that we were all in the same town at the same time. We had drinks at Harpers in East Lansing and stayed at the Marriott. It was supposed to be an early night.... but a few drinks later we changed our minds. This pic was taken from Carrie's camera phone (so technically she's there in spirit). There was a pic with all of us but it didnt turn out that well. Also, I apparenly spilled a few drops of my shot on everyone. oops... Garrett's in the middle, and Matt's on the right.



I still have a few more pics to get on my computer, so let me give you a little teaser for my next post (hopefully it will happen within the next 3 months): MSU tailgating, Bachelorette Party, and Carter time!