October Weddings

We personally think that October is a fabulous month in which to be wedded in marital bliss :) We're glad our cousin Dan and his bride Maya agree! Their wedding on October 4th in Hoboken, NY was a lot of fun. They were married on a grassy pier overlooking the NYC skyline - cocktails, dinner, dancing, and cigar bar to follow! No matter how you slice it, cigars smell like burnt a*s, so despite the dashing figures we cut, neither of us will be making a habit of it! It was fun to see family and party-hardy with the Steeves side. Jess vowed to outlast the girls and stay awake but didn't quite make it - I think Nally won that bet.

Speaking of October Weddings . . . we celebrated our first year anniversary this past Monday October 13th! It was a beautiful day and we happened to have a lot of family in the area, so we spent the day hiking around Green Lakes State Park (where Jesse 'accidentally' got us lost so we ended up walking out onto a golf course) with Mom, Dad, Liz, and our family friend Patrick.

A leisurely lunch at Alto Cinco' s followed and then we finished up the night - once we'd packed Mom and Dad on their way back to Jersey - with a true Brooklyn-style Horror Fest! For those of you who haven't had the pleasure yet, a Brooklyn Horror Fest is comprised of bad (preferrably B-grade) horror movies, good beer, and Ben and Jerry's icecream. We made it a mini-marathon and watched two back to back - 'The Ruins' and then 'Shutter' - and we only had to stop the first movie once for me because the cutting-creepy-cursed-mayan-killing-vines-out-of-my-own-flesh-with-a-hunting-knife-stuff was getting to be a LITTLE MUCH for my queaze-factor.

So yes! We did spend our actual anniversary watching horror movies with family, but we did end up doing the fancy dinner downtown earlier this week - sushi at 'Ambrosia'! We were also hoping for some year-old wedding cake (cheesecake - the best I've had!) but Patrick "couldn't find it" when he was housesitting for Kat at home in Jersey. Whatever, Patrick - I know you found that luscious cheesecake and served it to your dinner guests!!!

:)

Love to you all
Caitlin and Jess

PS - How do you like these mini-posts?? Let's get some comments! :)

Syracuse Regional Market

September also brought our first trip to the Central New York Regional Market. Think several big, long pavilions, packed mostly with fresh produce, milks and cheeses, specialty spices, wines . . .We weren't in a big shopping mood but we mostly wandered around, enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells. We did pick up some funny 'torpedo' red onions and a pumpkin or two that eventually ended up in a yummy soup (quite a few of you had it since we had to cart it everywhere we went for about a week due to the quintuplet-batch we made!).

Cider Day at the Stovers felt like a much-needed vacation for all. I happily stuffed myself on such eclectic fare as chinese spare ribs, pineapple salsa (thank you, Damian!), the requisite sausage and peppers on a roll, and (seemingly) gallons of fresh pressed apple cider. And yes, you CAN stuff yourself on cider. I don't know how, but cousin Margaret and I were waddling around half the party, waiting for enough digestion to occur so we could go back for another glassful! I'll have to refer you to Miss Nally for pictures - she has quite a few fabulous ones of the ladies posing with official Cider Day apples - authenticity guaranteed. Also, there MAY have been some apple juggling . . .but you didn't hear it from me, it's just the word on the street.

So that will bring September to a close for now - our first in Syracuse! I guess there will be a lot of 'firsts' this year - I'm afraid you'll have to put up with that for a while! That's the catch, the rub about being a captive audience - YOU ARE AT OUR MERCY!!! (in terms of we rely on you all to care about our goings-on here otherwise we are blogging into the void!)

Well I guess you can tell I'm feeling a bit punchy tonight - love to you all! More will follow - we have to make it through the first part of October before we can start posting about current events.

Muah :)

We Are Not MIA!

Eep! It's been inexcusably long since our last post - and there's been plenty going on in the months of September and October! I've decided to not overload everyone with one gi-normous post but instead to do a bunch of smallish ones - makes for more enjoyable perusing, right?

As I'm writing this, Jess and I are bundled up in sweatshirts, wool socks, and winter hats; cheerily in denial about the need to turn on the heat already! We're going to hold out for as long as possible, ie warm blankets, hot cider, and snuggling!

Where to start since our last post . . . we hosted newly-weds in September! Our fantabulous friends Jill and Tom came up to visit Syracuse, bearing updates and honeymoon pictures of their first month as a married couple. We love Jill and Tom and it was extra fun trading early-marriage stories and post-wedding escapades! Plus, we got to share two of our favorite Syracuse-area pasttimes with them - wine touring and berry picking! With Wally loaded down with friends, wine, raspberries, and orchard apples, we even took in a peek at Taughannock Falls.

To add to the fun, The Aunts (Renee and Jan!) were up in the area for a Master Gardener's lecture, so Saturday night we had a full house at 203 Hawthorne! In addition to the good food and wine we debuted Renee's berry crisp recipe and made a heaping double batch that night, starring a that-day-fresh-picked mix of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries from Grisamore Farms. Though Jill and Tom had to scoot the next day, we got to keep The Aunts for a while longer with bribes of shopping and an inaugural trip to Dinosaur BBQ. Has anyone heard of 'salt potatoes' before? They're big up here in the Syracuse area - makes sense considering Syracuse was the salt capital of America in the early 1800's - and are basically just whole, skins-on potatoes boiled in super salty water. We had them 'cajun-style' with spices and the requisite melted butter for dipping - delish!

I could keep going, but the Giants game calls - so does studying for my Movement exam! Plus, I have to keep you all in suspense - just what HAVE Jesse and Caitlin been doing for these past few weeks? What kind of shenanigans could they possibly have gotten into? Stay tuned, folks.

Moe.down and More

Hey all - it's been a while since we posted to 203 Hawthorne Street. I've started writing this post about 4 times in the last couple weeks - and then more stuff keeps happening so I start all over again :) So, I'll attempt a report on our goings-on in chronological order - but I can't promise anything! I'll have to look back on our calendar to retrace our steps from the middle of August til now . . .

Almost immediately following Jill and Tom's wedding was our trip to the Vacation Villages in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. We spent about 4 hours resisting an timeshare sales pitch (Thank you Daddy Steeves!) and the rest of the few days we were there visiting our Massachusetts family, driving along beautiful country roads, hiking, canoeing, and cooking in our fancy Vacation Villages condo. Because I hadn't been hiking in a while, rediscovering the joy of walking in amongst the trees, pointing out strange-looking mushrooms, and working up a pleasant sweat - truly the best way to exercise! We even found a path called 'Hawthorne Trail' - coincidence? I think not . . .

My Fall semester at Upstate's DPT program has started in earnest! I'm taking 17 credits including: Interventions I (we started with our 'soft tissue unit' - ie massage!), Movement Analysis I (biomechanics, therapeutic exercises, etc), Foundations of Patient/Client Management I (assistive devices, bed and wheelchair transfers and safety), Research Methods (how to be consumers of scientific literature!), and Bioscience (the workings of the body, pharmacotherapeutics). While some may be more "fun" than others (getting a massage 3x a week vs learning about control groups and experiment validity? you get my point . . . ), all my classes are very interesting, and, going into our third week of classes, I'm excited about gettin' into the 'meat' of the subject matter for each class. It helps that my professors are passionate about what the do, each with their own styles, quirks, and readily-admitted biases. And they want us to be passionate about PT as well! I'm afraid you will all have to endure over the coming years my rah-rah-health-and-fitness rants that I promise will be coming soon to a theater near you.

Jesse has started his new position at Hughes Elementary here in Syracuse. I'll leave him to fill you in on the details, but needless to say after finishing his first couple days (2 with the teachers and 2 with the kids), he was pretty pooped come Friday 6pm.

The start of school also meant participating in the 'White Coat Ceremony' at SUNY Upstate Medical University. All the DPT's, along with the other classes within the College of Health Professions, received a white lab coat from their Department Heads, signifying each students' entrance into the Health Care profession. It was actually quite a nice ceremony - my classmates and I definitely felt a palpable shift of responsibility laid upon our shoulders - to our future patients and to the profession! It was exciting and a little scary, as in, now I actually have an obligation to help people! Jess was there to support his wifey and to document the solemn occasion ;)

Over Labor Day weekend Jess and I attended our first music festival together! It was my first and Jesse's first in a while - Moe.Down 9. We joined about 15,000 Moe. fans and converged upon Rome, NY with our bitty tent, a cooler of food, and a grill. We hadn't listened to a lot of Moe. but was recommended the festival by Chelsea, our downstairs neighbor, who described the whole event as "funky mountain music" - those may not have been her exact words but that was the gist. The music was great, the weather beautiful, and the whole festival was based at the Snow Ridge ski resort with the main stage based at the bottom of a ski slope, so people were listening to the music all up and down the slope! It was a way to enjoy live music that we'd never before experienced, and we enjoyed watching from the top of the slope (quite a hike I'll let you know!) as much as being a few heads from the front of the stage - which we were for the first of Moe.'s sets! Our favorite group was actually Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet which consisted of two banjoes, a cello, and a violin. Abigail has a jazzy soulful voice - kind of an edgy Norah Jones - and one of our favorite musicians, Bela Fleck, played on the 6-string banjo. We didn't know the rest of the Sparrow Quartet, but they were truly amazing musicians in their own right - we got to see the violinist wail away on a traditionally 'classical' instrument. Definitely check them out for some great music. We also saw and enjoyed Yonder Mountain String Band and a group called Cornmeal - both seemed to take "hillbilly music" to an entirely different level - who knew you could jam out on a banjo or a fiddle? The entire weekend was filled with good music, good food, and meeting new people (music festivals draw some interesting characters).

And with the coming of Fall also comes: bah-dah-dum-bah-dah-dum-dah-dah-dum-dum-dahhhhhhh-buum-dah-dah-dah-dahhhhhh-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAAAAH-DAH!. . . yes that's right, football season!!! Now Jess and I may not seem like your typical football fans (maybe that's because we're not), but due to living as New Yorkers for a while and being subject to the fanaticism of our friends (thank you Johna nd Damian), the sport has grown on us :) This is our second year joining a Fantasy Football team so in addition to rooting for the Giants we'll be spending our Sunday Funday's tracking our individual 'teams' compiled of players from all over the NFL. Especially for a football novice like me, it gets me watching more games and makes it exciting. For someone like Damian, it's a chance to smack talk the rest of us :) So - on the condition we find a good new hot wings joint - we'll be enjoying the season along with the rest of the players in our 'league' - we even got Liz and Nally to join!

I think cooler weather triggers some sort of baking urge in me. I've been making energy bars with the food processor (think ginger, dates, toasted sesame seeds, raisins, walnuts, etc) and Jess and I have been sharing the oven - he for an out-of-this-world batch of granola, me for two batches of Giada's chocolate chip hazelnut cookies. I even harvested some fennel seeds from the gi-normous plant in our front garden, dried/toasted them, and have been throwing them in random things like pasta dishes and salads. Domestic Goddess am I. Eggplant-Tomato Casserole was another Giada dish (though the recommendation came from Renee!) and we've been grinding up and quickly eating multiple batches of scape (baby garlic!) pesto. The stuff is so delicious and pungent - Jess and I contentedly radiate a scape aura where'ere we go.

And that just about brings us up to today - which we realized is our first weekend together - just the two of us - up in Syracuse. We love all our guests and our travels to and fro, but there is something special about just 'being' at home together. We were so looking forward to the down time we even elected to forego the longish drive out to the Ithaca Brewfest (eep!). So far this day we've been highly productive in our coffee drinking, Economist perusing, organic "Four Season Harvest" gardening reading (stay tuned!), and Internet browsing - a perfect lazy Saturday in our book.

Stay healthy everyone. Be good to each other :)

With Love From Califon

Wow! What a weekend we've had! It all started with our middle-of-the-night trip to Jersey for the wedding of Jill and Tom, two of our favorite friends. We accomplished our mission - no traffic! It did mean, however, that we rolled up at Lois and Earle's at 2:45am - needless to say we did not receive the usual Steeves house welcome (though Kat is always up for a snuffly Hello). We slept a bit to prepare for . . . .wedding activities!!!!

We had a great time Friday evening, first at the rehearsal at Jill's long-time family church, St. John Neumann in Califon. Jill's priest, Father Bill, has known her since she was just a bitty. If I were ever to convert to Catholicism, it would be because of Father Bill! He is so warm and funny and compassionate, truly a vessel for the inspiration and loving kindness that Christianity is supposed to be all about. After a giggle-filled rehearsal the wedding party all trooped over to the Clinton House for dinner - only my second time there after all my years living in Jersey! Jess and I were lucky enough to sit with the Harrison siblings at dinner so we got all the wedding gossip and were within spit-ball throwing distance of the bride and groom (we restrained ourselves). It was a great start to the weekend's festivities.

Saturday was all about relaxation - Jess and the bridal party boys headed over to the golf course for 18 holes and the ladies went to breakfast and a mani/pedi session. I know the boys had fun and our pampering with the girls was just further opportunity to spend time with Jill and look over goofy family photos. Plus Jill's sister Brianne had put together a hardcover book of all our plannings and commentings from the blog - 'Jill's Bridal Beauties' - that we'd been using over the past year to stay in contact and discuss wedding stuff. Later that evening we spent more time with both Jill and Tom at a day-before-the-wedding-cocktail-hour at the golf course, where I rediscovered the joys of white wine and peach schnapps :) Needless to say, my sober Hubby drove Wally home that night!

Sunday morning was so exciting! The bridesmaid's single job was to keep the bride calm and happy on her wedding day. We were 90% successful (show me a bride that can remain 100% blissed out the morning of and I will show you the illicit substances that were required to accomplish it!) and we even got Jill to the church on time! The ceremony was beautiful (only a "minor" vows snafu that Father Bill smoothed over), a full Catholic mass, lots of singing, lots of people truly happy for the bride and groom. I got to walk with Jill's brother Drew - think I may have even gotten a smile out of him! I guess the only hitch was that the bridesmaids all walked up to the front of the church and as soon as we saw Jill enter with her daddy, we all realized we'd forgotten hankies! Many, many happy tears followed as Jill and Tom made their commitment to eachother surrounded by their family and friends. I'm sure it all flew by for Jill and Tom, but everyone there that day knew they were in the presence of something strong and beautiful - we danced out our happiness on the dance floor under a big tent in St John Neumann's backyard, and it even stopped raining long enough for a rainbow to come out - exactly on cue!

And all that was only the start of our adventures in Jersey! After a lazy Monday morning at the Steeves ranch Jesse got a long-awaited phone call from a Syracuse principal - "Congratulations, you're hired!" It's a 3rd grade inclusion classroom - just about the same position he had been teaching in last year in Brooklyn. Jess waited to start his hoopin' and hollerin' til after he hung up with his new principal, and then celebrations were started all over again! So much happiness in such a short period of time!

Since we were in Jersey and feeling like our summer together was truly official now (no more pounding the Syracuse school district pavement for Jess) we got to visit a few places before heading back up North. We had an unbelievable feast at John's dad's restaurant - Woody's Parkside Grill. If you're ever near Sparkill, definitely check this place out. It's a great mix of neighborhood bar (we watched the Olympics on their lovely flatscreen tv's) and fine dining - the food was outta this world! I would especially recommend the stuffed mushroom and coconut shrimp appetizers and the lemon chicken and linguini as a main course . . . After happily crashing nearby at D's house, we even got to see Jesse's grandma - and ran into Jesse's mom who was also visiting! Well, after having all this good luck following us we had to heed Margaret's advice and bought a megamillions lotto ticket - "hey, you never know."

Well, this has turned into an epic of a post - that's the update for us. We are happily snug back in Syracuse, dreamin up ways to use our couple weeks off before school starts up again for us both. We hope you are all well and enjoying the summer as much as we are.

Lots of love
Caitlin and Jesse

Summer's Here! (Officially)

Whoo hooo!! I am posting here now while officially on my Summer vacation! Final's have been taken and passed (yipee!), Portfolio's have been handed in - the next few weeks I am free as a bird!

I have two pictures to show you:

Do you see these lovely muffins? Why yes, they ARE blueberry bran - Jesse's first foray into muffin making! They came out of the oven at 6:10pm and are rapidly disappearing. The inspiration for the muffins was born out of a very real, very serious necessity - we have too many goshdarn blueberries! We picked heaps of them with downstairs neighbor Chelsea and her two kids, Windy and Fox. While Windy kept pronouncing the berries "Good," she didn't quite seem to get the idea because she preferred the green ones to the juicy blue big boys! Fox mostly drooled throughout the afternoon and kept the rest of us good company.

And this is the other latest addition to 203 Hawthorne: an overflowing wine rack! Thanks to two weekends of trips to the Finger Lakes with Lauren and Dan and then Steven and Olga we are well stocked for at least . . . a couple months???

Lauren and Dan's Visit

I don't think Lauren and Dan knew how much we were looking forward to their visit. We had a full weekend planned for them, from the hiking at Watkins Glen to the food and drinks we were having for dinner.

We started them off right, with one of Lois' Dream Dinners (peach marmalade pork) and a shot of tequila! It's become one of our customs that a weekend of fun start off with the guests' drink of choice...

Saturday morning after breakfast we drove them down to Watkins Glen State Park. It follows a beautiful stream with 19 waterfalls and over 800 stone steps that wind their way through a glacial gorge that is at points over 200 feet deep.

We then proceeded to hit up 5 wineries, where we tasted a variety of house wines, on the western shore of Seneca Lake. We stopped for lunch that we had brought, as well as afternoon relaxing on a dock along the shore. The finger lakes are north-south lakes with rolling hills between them, almost entirely covered with vineyards and cornfields. With the exception of the corn, we could have been in the south of France.

After an early evening nap, we took them out to our local tex-mex place, Alto Cinco, for really good food. A movie afterwards, and we had ourselves a full day...

They had to leave early-ish Sunday, so they missed the arts and crafts festival of downtown Syracuse, which Cait and I hit up. If we don't make the effort to go down there, we'll go for weeks without doing so, but I always forgot how beautiful the historic buildings are downtown. Some of them are from the early 19th century, made of gorgeous stone and brick. The festival itself had over 175 vendors, some of which were truly talents artists: painters, sculptors, woodworkers, and photographers, among many others were all set up in the historic district.