Holiday Extravaganza

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/brunch 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 nice - 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 heading 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+Stover 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 professionals 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 January and Happy February!!!

besos
Caitlin and Jesse

(Belated!)Ladies Night Out in Brooklyn

Can you think back to the middle of December? Where you were? What you were doing? Good. Because that's when this post was actually written - enjoy!

I am writing this perched on Liz's big-girl bed in the Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn. She and her lovely roommate Julia have just moved in a couple weeks ago, so the whole apartment right now looks much like Liz's room - boxes, clothes, appliances galore! Even in their semi-unpacked state, the two of them have already managed to make things homey. The kitchen is probably the most complete with a new microwave that looks like a spaceship, the spices lined up over the stove, Julia's German espresso cups peeping from the top of the fridge, and a creative storage system that gives a fun minimalist-like, ladies'-in-the-city vibe to the decor.

Hey Tiz - hope you don't mind I snapped a few pictures while you were at work!

Some other nice tidbits of Lizzie's new apartment:

- the bathroom is nicely long with a heating pipe right next to the toilet to keep your knees warm on cold December mornings (a definite bonus in my book!)

- being located on the 3rd floor, it is a nice daily climb for a bit of exercise but not too grueling for the stagger home from the pub (tho Liz never staggers - she's been known to waltz!)

I'll leave the rest for Liz to reveal. Nally and I had a nice time with her and Julia out at the Grill. Johnny was behind the bar, making us giggle, making us drinks. I don't miss the close quarters and noise of Brooklyn, but I do miss being near my favorite people, living with family. I think Jesse and I occillate back and forth between enjoying playing 'House' on our own and wanting to live in a big old house with all our sisters and roomies :) Who knows what the future will bring? Syracuse probably won't be forever - tho if the past few months are any indication, I do believe we will be enjoying Upstate for the next couple years.

Don't know if we'll be posting before we get back up into Syracuse after the holidays - we'll see, we may be inspired.

Have a wonderful holiday season everyone. We love you!

Caitlin and Jesse

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

On this shortest day of the year, I lay in bed watching a blizzard blanket Hawthorne Street of Syracuse, wondering at what point do I begin the shoveling. You clear the sidewalk at the end of the storm, not in the middle. I've shoveled more snow in the past month than I have in the previous 10 years combined, even having lived in the northeast that whole time.

We'll get exactly 9 hours of sunlight today. Not including the dim visibility of dawn and dusk, we'll have 9 hours for outdoor daylight activities. Our schedules have adapted so they don't rely on the sun to tell us when to wake up and when to go to sleep. But my poor indoor plants that I move around the house to get as much light as possible will be starved today with only 9 hours to feed them.

They don't like this frigid cold either. Syracuse lies just southeast of Lake Ontario, and winds from the northwest bring cold Canadian air across the lake, picking up its water, and dumping it in snow form in the Onondaga Valley. We average about 12 feet of snow each season and just below the freezing point for well over the next month. Tonight those winds are supposed to reach gusts of 50 mph.

When Percy Shelly wrote his Ode to the West Wind he was embracing seasonal changes.

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!"

We loved our open air farmer's markets of October and November; choosing between 8 varieties of local tomatoes rocks! But on this first day of winter, I'm looking forward to pulling on my winter boots and gloves. I can't wait to get a really good snow tube to try out in Thornden Park.

I'm also excited about the return of the sun, as on Thursday my plants will have 1 more minute of light than they do today.

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!

Sunday Funday

Howdy folks - we're glad Sunday Funday has come 'round again. Jesse has managed to roll his way into the semi's (Lebowski shout-out) of our fantasy football league - as have Damian, Lauren's boyfriend Dan's boss Dean, and - to everyone's consternation - Nally. May the best motley crew of hand-picked NFL players and teams win!

And yes, if you were wondering, Plaxico Burress (who shot himself in the leg with his own gun at a nightclub a few weeks ago), was on MY fantasy team.

I am COMPLETELY shocked that my team - HungryHungryHippos/Maude - has put-putted sadly into 8th place in our league. My players did, however, give a stunning performance on their way out last week - 120 points! Ironically, the most my team has gotten all season and one of the highest league scores as well. So, I went out with a bang (no pun intended) and had the satisfaction of crushing Jesse. Once, just once.

We had a decent covering of snow this past Friday (sorry to everyone else who got ice!) and I couldn't help but go out and take some pretty pictures of the winter wonderland scene. My LLBean boots have been serving me well - I've been wearing them in pretty nicely on the tramp back and forth between my finals! 6 Down - one to go! They will ALL BE DONE as of tomorrow at noon - and I will be rejoicing in the streets. Seriously, there may be some jigging and some high-stepping.

Also! I recently visited Food Democracy Now and signed a petition asking President-Elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of Agriculture who would be committed to moving our nation's food and agriculture policy towards more sustainable practices, ie less harmful pesticides, local/regional food, supporting CSA's (community supported agriculture) and small-business farmers.

Lots of Americans (not to mention farmers and consumers around the world) have jumped onto the local/organic/slow food bandwagon - but it shouldn't be a luxury reserved for the few who can afford to farm in safer, healthier ways or to keep up with organic prices at the supermarket. Jesse and I are fortunate enough to be living in a region of Upstate New York that boasts lots of small, family-owned and run farms, markets, stands, orchards, and vineyards. There's a lot going on up here and in other rural and urban settings - hopefully this focus on good quality, healthy, DE-licious food can spread to the rest of the nation!

Can't wait to see a lot of you during this Holiday Season! For those that we'll be missing this year, I refer you to the wise words of Buddy, The Elf:


The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.


(by the way, this advice works for the holiday season in general - not just christmas!)

Lotsa love everyone,
Caitlin

Addendum to Previous Post

Ok, ok - so I promise this is the last post today. I just couldn't help myself - I am completely running with the idea that you are all positively fascinated, need-to-know riled up about what we are eating on a regular basis, sooooo . . .

a big beautiful bowl of chili! This is what my desk looks like right now:

We actually made the chili a couple weeks ago - we've been freezing a good amount to dole out in small batches for those nights (like last night) when neither of us has the energy or mental focus to prepare anything other than left over chili or maybe mac and cheese. We wanted to make a turkey chili but at the groccers we ran into a lovely, lonely little package of beautiful "all natural" ground lamb. So the chili turned out 2lbs turkey and 1lb lamb - the perfect proportion to get that lamb flavor in the backround without totally overwhelming that good chili taste. Success!

And now, really this time guys, BACK TO WORK!

-the student DPT

Christmas Bells are Ringing . . . .

Well, in my head at least!

So here is the (long awaited, I'm sure) promised procrastination post. I've got my coffee cup refilled, the heat is cranked up in the apartment, and I've desperately tried to find things around the house to take pictures of for this post! The first of which you see here:

Your mission is: can you find the first 203 Hawthorne ornament of Christmas? We put it up before heading to Massachusetts this past weekend - I've been nagging the boys in my life to get into the Xmas spirit this year which I think must be working because it was Jesse who got out our tiny single box ornaments! So . . .that means that all nagging will work in the future, right?

Found it? So now that you have - here is the second piece of Christmas Joy! I've never been one for smelly candles (I guarantee you will never catch me walking into a Yankee Candle factory) but all that goes out the window during the Holiday season! I LOVE the smell of the trees, all with their piney goodness. I'm the crazy lady leaping from the sidewalks to go hug three at once, piney pokey needles be damned! So, this year we got a nice big smelly "Christmas Tree" candle. It is the appropriate shade of green and not even from Yankee Candle - it is in fact a "Village Candle" candle. Knock-off gi-normous candle = several bucks in savings.

Next up I want to get a bitty tree to put somewhere in the apartment - something to hang our small but growing pile of ornaments on so that I don't have to pathetically hang them on old nails, window sashes, and thumbtacks about the living room like I did last year in Brooklyn.

So far, I think, excellent procrastination has been accomplished. I'm due for it though! I'm half-way through finals - only 3 left to go with the last one on Monday. After that, I am planning some serious decompression time. We're talking baking, sleeping, movies, XC skiing, annoying Jesse with my 3 weeks off while he still has to work (sorry babe!), reading an actual book, writing letters . . . it's going to be a busy vacation ;)

Alright folks, while I'm still motivated to plow ahead, I shall return to my studies. I figure I get a solid couple hours done now, I can reward myself with 'The Office' tonight! You know what I'm talking about Nals . . . :)

Love you all - keep warm!

Caitlin

Family to the Rescue!!

Well, Wally will soon be snug as a bug in a rug.

We had some significant Wally wobblage on the way from Jesse's Dad's house and Warwick over Turkey Day Weekend - turned out we had two tires that were inappropriately lumpy - not flat, per se, but lumpy and concave where they should have been convex! We can't blame Wally - those tires were the originals from 1985!

Aunts and Uncles to the rescue!! We were lucky to be close by the Stovers that night, who graciously took a look at all of Wally's underbelly parts and let us crash for the night. As fate would have it, the Jan and Don C. also happened to have 2 new Wally-sized tires in Uncle Don's garage (aka Car and Motorcycle Paradise) and with a little help from our friends we got Wally fixed up for the drive home to Syracuse.

Thank you thank you Aunts and Uncles for feeding us and providing a large dose of automobile TLC. It actually ended up being a nice sojourn for us - we got to spend some more time with you guys (and got a look at Jan and Don's lovely new countertops and appliances! Whoo hoo! Next up: the flooring!) over what had been a busy holiday weekend.

So our next step will be to get a pair of snowtires to put on the back of Wally - then he will be snug as a bug in a rug for the Syracuse Winter.

Lots of love to you all - it may be a little while before we post again as I've got finals coming up on Monday. Then again, I may be desperately looking to take a break from studying, so you may hear from me after all!

Caitlin