Wow - so we have a LOT to share about our activities over the past month and a half! We've got Christmas, New Years, the whole month of January . . . . yipes!
Jesse and I were fortunate enough to both have a good chunk of time around the holidays to travel (thank you syracuse city school district and suny upstate!). While we didn't get to see ABSOLUTELY everyone we wanted to, we did manage to traverse to North Jersey, South Jersey, relatives in New York, friends (and fam!) in Brooklyn, the catskills . . .Wally got quite a workout! (Which reminds me, I believe we are due YET AGAIN for an oil change . . .)
Christmas Eve we got to spend time with Margaret and Stevo down in Barnegat, NJ. It was pretty wild going from freezing temperatures in Syracuse to balmy South Jersey sweater weather! We had a great time seeing Margaret's twin sister's kids - Rachel, David, and Mariah. I believe they all whooped me at air hockey, though Jess and I did reign supreme at Taboo (that whole telepathy thing we've got going on was helpful). We were even there long enough for me to go for a 'run' with Rachel and Jesse's sister, Lauren. I say "run" because mine was
more of a lop-sided, wheezy jog and only about half as long as the loop Lauren and Rachel did! Ah well . . . the DPT needs to start livin what she's preachin!Post Christmas activities included going up to spend the day with Jesse's dad in Saddlebrook, NJ. We stuffed ourselves silly on drink, his famous holiday salmon, and boardgames. We also visited Montclair for the first time - to see Jilly and Tom in their carriage house of wedded bliss! The morning after an evening of good wine, Rock Band, and looking through wedding albums, Jill and Tom took us to a great breakfast/br
unch place down the road - I can't remember the name of it now (Jill you're going to have to post the name in our comments section here!). I had a gi-normous arugala, goat cheese, cranberry salad that I had to wolfishly protect from wandering forks on all sides. Big portions of sweet potato fries and homefries made my morning :)We also got to go into Brooklyn for a couple days! We were soo excited to catch up with the Roomie at 12 Parkside Court (aka Johnny Love) via an excursion to Barcade (think Pacman+beer or Frogger+beer or Galaga+beer). The next night we even had a crew hoppin around Park Slope where we terrorized Georgie's lovely lady friend Ana (anna?) at her bar and then Nally and Amanda trounced several pairs of surly hipster boys at Bocci ball at Union Hall. It was very entertaining to watch.
One of my favorite parts of the trip to Brooklyn was just walking across Prospect Park again. It really is a beautiful public space - I appreciate it even more now that we are in Syracuse. The parks near us are n
ice - Thornden and Barry - but they are just not used in the same way as an NYC park. They lack the athletic trails, old trees, concert groves, and PEOPLE. Oh well. I guess it will be up to us to help improve Syracuse city park awareness! And I am grateful to get to walk across Thornden to school every day.Though we had missed to annual extravaganza that is Christmas at Grammie and Grandpa Steeves, we did get to have a smaller, less chaotic dinner date with them a few days later. Of course, the fact that it was almost New Years didn't stop Grammie from putting on a full turkey dinner :) I got to carve the turkey!!! The guys and gals who may have had a few things to say regarding my methods of attack were gentleman and lady-like enough to keep mum and applaud my enthusiastic efforts. Cousin Margaret even helped me find the wishbone :) Speaking of! We were glad that Margaret, David, James and Mary were also able to join Grammie, Grandpa, Uncle Bill, Jesse and I for dinner - David was just a day or so away from jetting back to Europe, I believe for a sojourn in Spain before hea
ding back to Oxford where he's been studying abroad. I can't remember if he actually HAD elbow patches on his sportsjacket or if I was just remembering it that way ;)After Washingtonville, NY it was up to Lew Beach for New Years! And though we had a lovely time at New Years (despite my catching something nasty the last day or so), the Lew Beach gathering I want to tell you about was the Lew Beach Bridal Reunion 09 two weeks later!!!!!!
We had such a great time at Lew Beach a couple weeks before our wedding, we wanted to try and gather up the bridal party again for round 2. Snow+woodstove+good food+drink+Stove
r family love+house full of friends and fam=Good Times at Lew Beach!~ We've got a shutterfly picture site up with photos from the weekend - I think there may even be some from the original Lew Beach Bridal gathering of 2007 as well. Well worth checking out would also be Ellie's facebook page where she has posted a rather fabulous video of me eating it
off a ski ramp while tubing in the snow. You can hear Nally shrieking in the background, Jesse shouting instructions, and Johnny laughing maniacally as my face meets tube, then plows four feet of snow. Of course, you do have to be Facebook friends with Ellie or any of the rest of the bridal party to view it ;)It was the first time in a while we'd had so many of our far-flung friends together and we even had Jan and Don and my parents come up for a bit as well. As usual, we brought too much food - gastronomical highlights would include Renee's sausage and biscuits, hot tomato soup and grilled cheese after a full morning of sledding and tubing, homemade (store-bought crust) pizza, Renee's sausage and biscuits again (sorry guys, that's what you get for leaving early! no second helping of sausage and biscuits for you!) . . . .we ate well that weekend.
It's been about two weeks since the Lew Beach Weekend - Jess and I have been working hard back home - he for his 3rd grade classroom, me for my own PT classes. For my part, the semester is going really well. Neuroscience is about the most intense class I've ever taken in terms of content volume and complexity. However, our professor is amazing at teasing out the best ways people learn material and caters to all our learning styles during her lectures and lab sessions. We also just had a teleconference with two military PT's from Fort Drum (where I'll be doing my first clinical experience in the Fall!) today in our Differential Diagnosis class. The military model of physical therapy is particularly interesting because PT's there have much more autonomy than civilian PT's. They get to order imaging tests such as Xrays and can prescribe certain meds like anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants. Because they are the first health care prof
essionals that a lot of people go to on the base, they have to be really good at differential diagnosis, ie be able to tell when a neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) condition really IS NMS as opposed to something that could have similar signs and symptoms (systemic diseases such as heart problems, infections, cancer, etc). I did manage to make a slight fool of myself in front of these PT's (who I may be soon working with!eep!) during the teleconference, but I came out of it being more excited for my first clinical experience than ever! It's going to be a unique and valuable chance to make mistakes, learn, make mistakes, etc. I have a feeling it's also going to help me develop a bit of a tougher skin (if the ball-busting I received today was any indication)!Well, what else is going on with us . . . .oh, yeah, we're buying a house too . . . .
!!!??!!!
Yep, Jesse and I have found a single-family house in the University area that we're hoping to close on by the end of March. It's a house that needs a lot of cosmetic (and not so cosmetic) fix-up work, but with a little help from our family and friends (you guys all want to come up and help paint a 1900sqft house, right?), it will be B-E-A-UTIFUL. We love that its in the University/Westcott area and still close enough for me to walk to and from Upstate. We'll keep you all updated and let you know when ALL IS OFFICIAL, but for now, just keep your fingers crossed for us.
That might just do it for this post. It's 7pm on a Friday. I've been puttering around with this post over the course of a couple hours while Jesse's been alternating between talking with our broker, our mortgage guy, and playing Rise of Nations on the computer. We may have an evening of well-deserved laziness at home (Iron Man on netflix!!) or we may venture downtown to our favorite bar, The Blue Tusk, to try out another of their draft beers (we may make it through all 100+ of them by the time I'm done with school, maybe not). Love to you all - goodbye to Janu
ary and Happy February!!!
besos
Caitlin and Jesse
