Girls Weekend 2012

On Veteran's Day weekend, my mom and my sister, Holly, came to visit me! We had tossed around the idea of converging in Pennsylvania for a girls weekend for some time, but took a little while to iron out the details. Since Holly lives in Michigan and Marmee lives in North Carolina, I am sort of in the middle.

Marmee was able to find a good price on a plane ticket, so she came in early on that Friday. Very early. My bed was sad to see me leave it, but I was excited to get to the airport to retrieve my dearest madre. She came with me to get my haircut that afternoon and we got to visit the Duck for a few minutes. Marmee hadn't seen her since last Thanksgiving and she has, of course, changed a LOT since then. The Duck was happy to have an audience. She sang to us, let us wear her bracelets, and tried to convince us that it was nap time so we would read her stories. We had fun. After our visit with the Duck, Marmee and I went grocery shopping and prepped for Holly to arrive. She was driving, so it took her a wee bit longer and we were getting too excited to contain ourselves. Finally, after a grueling day on the road, she arrived and we ate tacos. Here are Marmee and Holly, reunited:

On Saturday morning, Boyfriend and I dragged them out of bed and took them to an awesome breakfast place we discovered while on one of our driving adventures. It's called Gab N Eat and it. is. delicious. If you go, you MUST get some sausage. Trust me. Later that afternoon, we went to Phipps Conservatory, cameras in tow. We're a pretty big camera family, you see, and the chance to photograph thousands of beautiful plants and flowers was too good for us to pass up. We had an excellent time. Here is one of the beauties I captured on my phone (I haven't taken the photos from my camera off yet...):

While we were strolling around Phipps, we took this self portrait of the three of us on Holly's phone (thanks for the picture, Pooks!). I think it turned out really well. I love it.

This is my fair Pookie, camera strap around her neck, while we were at Phipps. I think she looks pretty spectacular.

After our excursion to Phipps, we came home, rounded up Boyfriend, and went to Luciano's for dinner. Luciano's is one of my favorite local restaurants. It is, if you couldn't guess from the name, an Italian place and their food is pretty awesome. If you go, you should get the bruschetta. And wedding soup. And meatballs. And everything. For the most part, everyone was happy with their food and we had a delightful time.

When we got back to my house, we commenced one of our major project schedule for this visit. See, when we see each other normally, we are typically in the middle of some major family event (reunion, wedding, graduation, etc) or holiday so we are pretty much always running around and never get to spend as much quality time together as we would like. We decided it would be awesome to do some crafty type things together. Holly brought the supplies for two crafts. I had supplies for the third. Below you can see Holly working diligently on our first craft, painting wine glasses. We watched 27 Dresses while we did this and it was a fabulous evening.

On Sunday, we made breakfast at home and then met up with a good family friend who also lives around Pittsburgh for lunch and went shopping afterward. We took the shot below while we were waiting for our friend to arrive at Rock Bottom Brewery.

We ended up going all the way to Ikea because Marmee had never been to one and we needed to remedy that. I bought a couple of pieces too large to comfortably fit into the trunk, so my wonderful mother crammed herself in the back seat with the boxes. What a trooper.

On our way home, we stopped at the Duquesne Incline so we could view Pittsburgh from a beautiful place. I didn't have my camera with me, which was sad. Here, though, is Holly:

When we got back to my house, we worked on our other two projects: making fabric covered button earrings, and also making little Thanksgiving banners that say "Give Thanks" on muslin, backed by burlap. Everything turned out beautifully. Why don't I have any good pictures? I don't even know. I'm sorry. We did watch a couple of movies while we worked on these crafts: The Duchess and The Wedding Date. We stayed up waaaaaaaaay too late, which was sort of regretable, but not really because we had a really good time.

On Monday, Holly had to hit the road back to the Great Lakes state pretty early, which was a bummer. She did have quite a lengthy drive ahead of her, so I guess I can forgive that. Marmee and I were able to hang out for most of the day, though. We went to lunch, did some window shopping, and just spent time together before I had to take her to the airport.

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend. It was nice to spend time with them without having to worry about rushing off to something or another. We got to be silly, talk, and just do what we wanted. I can't wait to do it again.