OTA Countdown

I found a great informative article describing OTA's a little more called NFL is OTA Happy.
http://lloydvance.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/the-nfl-is-ota-happy/

Tuff has already had a few weeks of OTA's and will have three weeks left. The article explains OTA's wonderfully, but basically OTA's (Organized Team Activities) are football practice. Everything else they have been doing in the off-season has just been lifting and agility.

Great picture of Tuff at an OTA


Last Saturday Tuff and I volunteered the day at an event called International Children's Festival in Pittsburgh. We worked at our church's booth making Popsicle stick puzzles using ink stamps with all the kids that visited.


The kids love to stamp



We golfed in a charity event last Friday. Below is a picture of Tuff and his teammates, as well as Jay Simon, the event founder.


The four guys on the right in the pic below are some of Tuff's teammates that were on a team at the golf outing. They are golfing from the same hole we were on but not supposed to be on that hole. We stopped to watch their shots back over the trees to their hole.


Our group posed for a picture.


Ok here is a serious one


Tuff loves to find golf balls. We golfed at a course on Friday and Tuff was in golf ball heaven .



The picture below is a shot from the roof of our new apartment. Pretty cool view of downtown.


Today we walked around downtown since it so close to our new place. There is a nice trail along the north shore that is right along the baseball and football stadiums.

We Moved to Short Term Living

Last week we visited Pittsburgh's Edward Marc Chocolatier since our friends from our small group are the Chocolatiers! Its actually a milkshake factory as well so Tuff and I split an awesome chocolate chip cookie dough milkshake. What is really cool is that they have one of their stores in the Pentagon. Naturally we posed for a picture in front of the chocolates.

Below is the Chocolatier himself, Marc Edwards and his wife Meaghan.

The best part of our trip to the chocolate store was that Tuff tried a chocolate covered sweet pickle. He rated it a 4.5 out of 10.


The Edwards started hosting get togethers at their house every Friday the weather is good. They turn around their TV in their house window so we can watch it from the outside.



I volunteered to hand out water at the Pittsburgh Marathon May 2nd. It was a really fantastic experience to watch all the runners, especially the elite runners. Since the volcanic ash kept a lot of elite runners from participating in the Boston Marathon, many of them came to Pittsburgh's marathon to compete. Best of all we were located at the halfway point. Worst of all it rained the entire time.


Check out all those plastic cups! We had to rake them off the road as the thousands of participants ran by. There were 16,000 participants so we handed out a lot of water.



Today we made the move from our wonderful place on the waterfront to a fully furnished efficiency downtown. We are at the efficiency until the end of June, which is when we have a month off and we will travel to Minnesota and Montana. Then we will return to Pittsburgh by August 1st for Steelers training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. So in the meantime all our stuff in is a storage unit.


Oh yeah, I also got my wisdom teeth removed last Monday. I'm extremely fortunate because the experience so far has been super easy. From the moment the dentist put the pliers on the first tooth, the procedure was over in less than two minutes! Unlike Tuff, I chose not to keep my teeth.

After the Draft

How is everyone? We miss you all. Spring is in high gear in Pittsburgh and the trees and flowers are blooming everywhere. The Steelers did not draft any safeties but they did pick up a few free agents post draft making a current total of seven safeties. By regular season they will drop this number down to four or five.


Tuff got a new helmet this year so we brought his old one to our small group study for 'show and tell'. In the picture below, Skylar is trying the helmet on.

On Tuesday evening we went to our first Pirates game. They hardly have anyone in the stands because they currently are not the hottest team in the league. We had a lot of fun though because we got to sit in a suite and watch the Penguins play in the playoffs on TV.


In the suite at the Pirates game they feed us a lot, including my favorite, dessert.


Tuff's good friend Casey is getting married! We are so excited for him. To celebrate the engagement I brought back an old photo of Casey and Tuff enjoying a scooter ride together.

Nothing else going on but I did just get a haircut with bangs!

As always I will keep you updated on the latest.