Phipps & Floyd

Hi All - I'm already a day late in posting every Sunday, but I'm really close (today is Monday). Anyways, we are leaving Pittsburgh today. We're going to take one last yoga class at this place called Amazing Yoga. They do Baptiste yoga and it's pretty intense, but really good. Then probably have one more breakfast at Pamela's Pancakes. They have amazing hashbrowns and pancakes. Then we're headed to our new place in C-town, which is on Lake Ave. and West 104th Ave. We're excited because it has a pool, jacuzzi, fitness room, and elevator. We have this really heavy bag of equipment that we've been hauling up and down three flights of stairs everyday in Pittsburgh, so this will be nice.
We've been working really hard the past 2 days trying to finish up Pitt. We took Friday off to do some last-minute touristy things here before we left. We first went to Phipps Conservatory to see the botanical gardens. The gardens were amazing on their own, but there was a special exhibit by Dale Chihuly, who is masterful in the creation of glass art. He's done glass work in the Bellagio in Vegas and also in the Atlantis casino's in the Bahamas. It was really quite amazing. The glass pieces were huge - some were hanging from the ceiling and some were installed into the gardens. All of the pieces added so much to the garden experience and he did a wonderful job making each piece really bring out the other elements in each garden. If you ever plan on coming to Pittsburgh between now and November, you must see this exhibit. I think I took over 100 pictures, but I won't post them all!
After our amazing Chihuly (by the way, he's my new hero!) experience, we went to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, which is about an hour and a half away from Pittsburgh. He too used very organic methods in building Fallingwater. It's built around this waterfall but he incorporates parts of the landscape into the house. There's this huge boulder that most architects would have eliminated from the landscape before building, but he decided to make it a part of the house. So, you can see the boulder from outside of the house on one of the many terraces, and then it's used as a bench in the kitchen and as a fireplace in the living room. It was really great, except for the tour guide. We think she had a hangover or something because she didn't really explain much. But I did find out the house used to be occupied by the Kaufmann family, who owned the Kaufmann's Department Stores, but I think those have been bought out by Macy's.
Here are some pics of the glass gardens - I will get some up of Fallingwater soon as I haven't downloaded them to the computer yet and everything is packed away for our move to Cleveland. Come visit me in Lakewood! Oh, and we're trying to put together a Put-In-Bay trip for a weekend in August. We'll be camping, so let me know if one of the earlier weekends in August work for you and if you'd be interested.

For you mom...

Hello again - here are some pics from Team 2 (Maureen and Jacqui) from Disney, Jacksonville, and DC. I thought I'd post them to keep you occupied. Enjoy!

Eeyore trying to eat me at a Cast Brunch at Disney.















Inside a phone booth at Epcot.
















Outside the Phone Booth at Epcot.





















PB&J before Rafting in West Virginia - thanks, Emily!
















Dinner at the Argonaut on H Street in DC















Dinner on Team 2's rooftop terrace!

Home for Weddings

Hi All! I've been kind of bad about posting on the blog, so I've decided to post once a week - probably on Sunday's from now on. So, I went home for a little over a week for two of my very good friend's weddings. Both of them were very nice and tons of fun. I don't have any pictures though because I relied on my friends and am waiting for them to send them to me - thanks, Pam and everyone else who sends pics! I also got to spend a lot of time outdoors while I was home. We went to Vermilion on Lake Erie for two days with Dev's family, which was great. Lots of beach time! Katie O. and I also went water skiing with my dad at Fairport Harbor. Katie is a much better skier than I am though. Hopefully I'll get better when I'm home next month. There was also lots of quality pool time spent at Allison's, which was wonderful. It was great to see everyone and I can't wait til we can all get together again! So, I'm back in Pittsburgh now. Emily and I worked for two days, but it rained today so we're hanging out in a coffee shop. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but I really hope it doesn't. We'd really like to leave here Sunday and we have two more days of collecting and one more day of fun left. After we're done here, we'll be heading up to Cleveland until mid-August. Ok, it just stopped raining, so we're go try and collect. We're looking for places to live in C-town right now, so if anyone knows of any furnished apartments near downtown or downtown let me know. Right now, we have a pretty good lead on a place on the lake on Lake Ave. on the Cleveland/Lakewood border. So, look for another update with pics this Sunday. Take care!

Home/Pittsburgh

Hey All! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. We left DC the last week of June and moved up to Pittsburgh. We are living in an area called Shadyside. It's pretty cool - there are a lot of shops and some bars and coffee shops. I went home for a weekend before I moved here for my sister, Sharon's, wedding. Congratulations, Sharon and Michael! Emily went out of town last Thursday evening and her replacement from the Portland office, Danny, didn't get here until Sunday night. So, I decided to go home for the weekend because it is only about an hour and a half away and I had nothing else to do! It was good to see everyone. I also got to see Lake Lucerne's fireworks. I'll be going home again this Friday for Sara's wedding and staying through the week for Allison's wedding. Should be good times!
So, Pittsburgh has been pretty cool so far (except for this lady who basically stole our money, which is a whole other story). Yesterday, we went downtown to see what this place is all about. We went to the Duquense Incline, which is a public transportation method (and also a great view of the city) that gets you up this big hill on the southern portion of the Ohio river. It has a perfect view of the city, which is really pretty. We were hanging out at the top of the hill when fireworks started. They were for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game (I guess they won - Go Indians!!!). So, those were nice to see.
We then came back down and hung out at a bar, Doc's, here in Shadyside. Pittsburgh has a big fireworks display tonight downtown at Three Rivers Point State Park, but there's a 70% chance of rain, so it's a little iffy right now. We'll probably go check it out anyways. Well I hope everyone has a wonderful Fourth of July! See you soon!!!