Nadiyah goes to college

I’ve been writing about our niece Nadiyah since I started this blog in 2010. She was actually my first niece experience and I absolutely loved being an aunt for the first time. It’s funny that there was actually a time when it was OK to tell her that she was my favorite niece but I digress.

It is times like these that I'm glad that I’ve always been a bit picture crazy because it is incredible for me to see just how much she has grown. Just look at how small she was here and even smaller here!

Since she was born I’ve loved building a relationship with her. I’m always making sure to let her know that if she ever needs me I will be there, no matter what. And now this amazing girl is 12 years old. I don’t know how it happened as I still picture her as our 2 year old flower girl.

But she isn't two anymore and she is growing up to be such a wonderful young lady!

She stayed with us over Labor Day weekend and we had such a great time. I'll break down her visit in several posts because (you guessed it!) I took way too many pictures.

For her first day with us we decided to take her to the colleges in our area. She is only 12 years old but I don't think it is ever too early to get a young person to start thinking about their future. Sean gave her some "homework" to do regarding the colleges we were visiting and she did so well! It was awesome to see how much she enjoyed touring the colleges and seeing all the students going to their classes. She is convinced that she is going to college where we live and I would love that but I also know that right now she thinks we're pretty cool, haha.

We got lucky on our last college stop because we just happened to be on the campus when a tour would be starting in five minutes. We signed up and before we knew it we were having a personal tour of the campus. It was really neat and I hope that Nadiyah enjoyed it as much as she said she did.

At the end of the day, we all had our favorite campus. Sean and I loved Lehigh University but Nadiyah loved Moravian College. Either way, they were all really great campuses and I hope this is something we can do with Nadiyah every year until she actually does go to college. OK, enough of all my talking, here's some pictures!

First campus, Lehigh University.





















Nadiyah loved seeing this and said it made her think she was in a romantic movie.



We took a short break and went downtown for lunch at Tapas.



This was Nadiyah's first tapas experience and she loved it :)





The next college we were visiting was Moravian College so it made sense to stop at their bookstore downtown. Nadiyah picked up a sweatshirt and she wore it for the rest of the time she was with us. I mean it. The temperature was burning hot and she would not take it off. It puzzled me and Sean, lol.





Second stop, Moravian College.



Oh the places you'll go.









And our last stop was Lafayette College where we got lucky and arrived just in time for a personal tour.



Look at her go!







Our tour guide is a geologist major and she was so excited to take us to her building and show us around.





It was such a great learning experience but we had something in mind for Nadiyah that would probably be a little more fun for her. An evening at the fair! To be continued ...