Yes, you read it right.  Some good ol' lovin'!  This weekend was yet another blast.  My sister had decided that she would throw a fall party for family and friends, and so, Shawn and I packed our weekend bags for the second week in a row for another trip.  This time we headed up to the Upstate.  (Last weekend was down to the coast for his mom's 50th birthday!)

My sister had gone all out, and with Shawn, my younger brother, and myself as her helpers, we turned her house into a fall festival early Saturday morning.  Like the pilgrims back in the day, the boys worked outside in the yard, while my sister and I toiled over the hot kitchen stove.  Okay, okay...so not really that extreme.  Hehe!  But the boys did work out in the backyard and put together a 5-hole putt-putt course.  They put together a bowling lane using some pumpkins and gourds for bowling balls and pins.  We also had a checkerboard table set up in the back--and yes, with pumpkin and gourd pieces! Then, inside the house, my sister and I were baking away some sweet fall treats--cookies, cakes, and pies. 

My sister is just like me (or I guess I should say I am just like her as she is older.)  She had everything down to a T for this party.  Like I said, pumpkins and gourds for game pieces and even some scoring sheets for the putt-putt and bowling.  She had me cutting out pilgrim hats for a "Put-The-Hat-On-The-Turkey" game.  She had a jar of candy corn and a jar of indian corn for a "Guess-How-Many-in-the-Jar" game.  She also had several of us peeling a huge bag of candy caramel for melting for a caramel apple buffet--completed with sprinkles of all fall colors and M&Ms.  I mean, she really just WENT ALL OUT!

But the good ol' lovin' didn't stop there.  Really that was just the beginning.  Going home for me this weekend was re-living my childhood through the games and through spending time with my grandma!  Some good ol' lovin' and quality time with my "Nanay!"  I joked around with her and traded stories--I would tell her of my life here in Carolina as she would tell me of her life these past couple of years in the Philippines.  She also told me lots of my childhood stories, which was something I just really enjoyed.  All of my 14 cousins and I on my mother's side were taken care of by Nanay.  She was telling me how all 15 of us spent our first 2-3 years in her hands, and how of all of us, I was perhaps the loudest.  But adoringly she kissed me saying that in spite of my loud mouth as a child (which my parents vouched for is still existent at the moment), I have made up for it all with my accomplishments in school.  I always made sure to send her copies of my certificates and newspaper clippings as I received them ever since I moved here to America.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the weekend, however, would have to be as she watched the Carolina game Saturday night with the group.  Plopped down on the middle of the couch, Nanay had a pizza in one hand (the other was holding a blanket around her as she gets so cold so easily and is not so used to the cold weather).  She looked like she was intently watching the game.  I had explained to her that the guys with the "CAROLINA" on their shirts go to my school and that the game on TV was what we had been waiting for all day long.  She just sat there eating her pizza away and even tried a hot wing, which she quickly disposed off to me citing it was too hot.  How adorable that my very itty-bitty ol' Nanay was "getting Americanized."  Hehe!

I wish that the weekend could have gone on longer, but of course...Monday will always come!  I hope that y'all had a great weekend (even if the Gamecocks lost!)  We'll hopefully get it all together for our last two games.  I have lots of friends who go to both Florida and Clemson.  I'll never hear the end of it, if we don't pull it through!

Catch y'all on the flipside, Gamecocks!