I'm such a sap

Chris is in Florida for a conference, and I feel completely lost without him. I know that's pathetic, but it's true. He's only there for a week, and I'll only be without him for four days, but I feel like a piece of me is 1000 miles away. I guess that I feel lucky, though, because even though we spend most of our free time together, we still can't stand to be apart. I appreciate the fact that our relationship is so strong after over 10 years.

Sister Fidelma's 90th Birthday

I have some relatives who are nuns. Actually, they're not really relatives....let's see if I can explain this: They're my dad's cousin's aunts. Make sense? Probably not, but it does to me. Anyway, their names are Sister Mary Henriella and Sister Mary Fidelma. It was Fidelma's 90th birthday, so on October 12 there was a party at the church where they serve. There were about 25 or 30 people there, mostly relatives, and Chris and I were the youngest people there by many years. But the Sisters were super sweet and so happy we could make it. I only took a few pictures and they're probably not all that great, but I'll post them anyway.

The day started out with a mass, which Chris and I did not attend, but afterwards we went into the church (St. Stanislaus in Buffalo) and took some pictures.
Then it was time to party! We went across the street to the building where the nuns live, and we mingled for an hour or so, then went to a little chapel to say grace, then we went to a little dining room where we ate lunch.

Here is Sr. Henriella, (biological sister of the birthday girl) with their other biological sister, Rita (wearing white). (It's tough to describe relationships between people when they're both sisters and Sisters ;)
And here's the birthday girl, Sr. Fidelma. She's a little forgetful at 90 years old, but she's as sweet as can be. Her greatest memories seem to be the times she spent with my grandmother who, again, is not related to the sisters. Let me see if I can explain it this way...Sr. Fidelma and Sr. Henriella's biological sister, Rita, married my grandma's brother, Arthur. Does that make it any clearer? Probably not, but again...makes sense to me ;)

Aunt

I hate to brag, but I will anyway :) I'm an aunt to three of the coolest little boys and one crazy-cute little girl. My brother has three sons, Nathan (7), Trey (almost 5), and Caleb (4), and my brother-in-law has a little girl, Avah (15 months).

Here I am goofing around with Trey in May, 2008.

And then Trey got ahold of my camera and decided to take a picture of me and Nate.

Here I am with Caleb (left) and Trey (right) snuggling up by the bonfire on the 4th of July, 2008.
For the past few summers, Nate has spent several days at our house. He loves being here and I love having him here. When he's not here, I miss having him around! This is a picture we took of ourselves at the beach on Lake Erie in Dunkirk.
This past August, I went to the Buffalo Zoo with my parents and the boys. Here I am with Caleb posing with a zebra in the background.
And here's my niece, Avah. I don't think anyone has taken a picture of me holding her, so you'll have to settle for a picture of her trying to put her glasses on so she can look like Uncle Chris.
I consider myself very lucky to be surrounded by such cuteness!

Animal Lover

Another thing about me--I'm an animal lover. I have a few of my own pets, and some of them have been a little on the weird side...most notably our rat, Vailey. I believe we should be kind to all animals, and I'm firmly against animal testing.

Here are some pictures of Kelly: Animal Lover: (Actually, I'm only posting one pic now because I have some laundry that needs to come out of the dryer...I'll post a few more eventually.)

Here I am with a Lorikeet at the Aquarium of the Pacific in April, 2007.

This is me with our dog Xander, a lab mix who we rescued from the pound four years ago. Can you believe someone abused this sweet animal?

New idea

I have a lot of pictures that make me think of who I am as a person, so I thought, Why not use some of those pictures to show my blog viewers who I am? (I realize that this has probably already been thought of and done by others, but it's new to me!) So that's what I'm going to do! The first picture in my Who I Am series is....

Wife!Here we are on our wedding day, April 5, 2003.

It's finally hockey season again!

Over the last few years, our passion for the Sabres has grown quite a bit. We've always liked them and would go to games in college whenever we could. (Bonas would often run bus trips to the arena at a reasonable cost for us poor college students.) I'm not sure quite what it is that's gotten us so into it, but it's an understatement to say that we're huge fans. Right now the first game of the season is on, and although we're off to a bad start (we're less than 4 minutes in and we're down by 1), we're still enjoying seeing our guys back on the ice and we're looking forward to a great season and a Stanley Cup!

Nightmares about fires

On September 15, my brother-in-law's house burned down. Then on the 21st, a happy family of 5 in Fredonia became a homeless family of 3 when their house burned down, and two little boys, ages 3 and 10, died. The other night I had a nightmare that our own home caught fire, and I believe that it's due to the two fires that have happened so close to me.

Quiet blog lately

I'm not sure why I haven't blogged lately. I guess maybe I feel like nothing interesting has happened, and sometimes I figure since no one reads it, what's the point, and I have been a little on the busy side, but other than the typical "excuses" for not blogging, I don't have a very good explanation as to why I've been absent. I've been visiting my blog to check other people's blogs, but I just haven't been inspired to write. Or maybe I've been TOO inspired to write, but I'm spending too much time being inspired and not enough time writing. Either way, I'm actually feeling a little empty because I haven't written.

We've been doing some fun stuff! I just love spending time with Chris :) Last weekend we went to a preseason Sabres game and sat in the second row, then during the 3rd period we moved up to some empty seats in the front row, so we got to pound on the glass and act like obnoxious hockey fans. Actually, that's not true...we weren't being obnoxious. We weren't swearing and acting like jerks, but we were pounding on the glass...that's just fun!!!

My students this year have been absolutely awesome! My Girl Talk group inspires me to want to do more and better things. I have a few students who want to do all kinds of service projects, and I'm SO PROUD of them. And one nice thing about them is that they're young--9th and 10th grade! So I'll have 3-4 years to work with them and help them with all kinds of service projects. I'm a big advocate for volunteering and giving back to other people, so this is like living a dream for me. I'm teaching young people the value and beauty of doing things for others. I've never felt so good about my job!!!

I'm finding that politics really bother me. As I've mentioned before, I'm very moderate about some topics and hold very strong opinions about other topics, but I've realized that it bothers me when people are hypocrites. I have some very good friends who are rubbing me the wrong way, and I hate that I get so riled up. I have to just keep my mouth shut, cast my vote, and hope that we can peacefully coexist no matter who is elected. What really matters in the end is LOVE, COMPASSION, and KINDNESS!

I went to the Ellicottville Brewing Company ("Fredonia campus") with Chris and some of his Canisius coworkers on Friday. I really liked everyone there and we shared some laughs. It was fun. I didn't drink beer, though. Beer is not my friend ever since that time I drank some (not much--just a few ounces, because I didn't really like it) and then went on carnival rides. I can comfortably say that I will never drink beer again.

I can't think of anything else right now, and my battery is going to die soon anyway. I have to go pick out my clothes and prepare for another busy week at work. And hopefully I'll remember to blog more. As always, thanks for reading!