The Irish came to Dallas last month to play Arizona State at Cowboys Stadium. Mike and I ended up not going to the game itself, but we did drive out to tailgate for the afternoon before the game. Elizabeth watched Michael and Malcolm for the afternoon, so we just took Joseph and he enjoyed his second time out to Arlington. It was unexpectedly chilly, but the rain held off for the afternoon and we had a fantastic time. I got to see three of my classmates, two of whom I hadn't seen in six or seven years (!), who'd come in for this game from Houston, Austin, and Chicago. I was so happy to visit with them. I've said before that Notre Dame is really the only thing in my life I experience nostalgia for. It doesn't take much to remember studying all night at the heavy wooden desk in my senior dorm room, waiting for friends on the steps of South Dining Hall (and eating my trusty chicken patty sandwich for lunch all the time), making Easy Mac in my hot pot, scrawling notes on people's white boards, fighting the wind and trudging through snow during finals weeks, praying with friends at Sunday night dorm masses, standing on the wooden bleachers in the stadium (either baking in August or shivering in November), lugging suitcases and boxes up and down stairs every semester for move-in and move-out days, scrolling through microfilm in the library, listening to the weird radiator clanging sounds in old buildings, and just ... everything. There's such a tremendous sense of *place* about Notre Dame that stays with you. I've only been out eleven years and I know I'm probably as bad as any other alum in complaining about not being able to recognize half the new buildings around campus or having no idea how the technology has changed things about the student experience (why, in my day, ethernet had just been installed on campus, and MP3s were the new file format you could use to download songs from any student's folder on the open intranet, and I didn't even have a cellphone until senior year! *shakes fist*). Still, enough stays the same that it doesn't take much at all to remember everything. And of course the things I valued most about ND were the friendships. It was a pretty amazing group. And while many people, as noted, I haven't seen in years, they were the kind of friends that you can see after seven years and know that, while they're different, they're also still the same in so many ways and it's wonderfully easy to talk as if no time has passed. I'm so thankful for that.
...And enough with the reminiscing. We did not end up making it to my sister's tailgate, since the parking lots were a lot farther apart than I realized from looking on the map, but she also had a fun time, and she got to go to the game too. Also, my parents came in for the weekend and so did Mike's dad, and all of the grandparents really enjoyed seeing the grandkids.
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| Michael is always so happy to see Lita! |
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| Go Irish |
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| Happy to hang out with Grandpa! |
A special surprise this weekend was seeing Aunt Amanda, who came back for the weekend from where she is working in Guatemala. You can tell how happy she was to see her little sobrinos. They were pretty happy to see her too. Que buena sorpresa! :)
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| Target trip! |
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| Silly faces |
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| Michael and his godmother |
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| Amanda and sobrinos |
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| Sibs, parental units, and cousins :) |
