8/23/10

Happy Monday, everyone!

Matt starts back to school today.  He will be taking three graduate Biology classes this semester (9 credit hours) and will have class Monday through Thursday every week.  He is excited to go back, though who knows how long the excitement will last!

I had four days off of work last week so it was nice to get things done around the house.  We are still working on the guest bedroom, but it should be 100% finished tomorrow!  Unfortunately it is taking three coats to completely cover the dark red and blue that were the original colors.  But as soon as it is painted, we are setting up our new guest bed and completing the look with a lilac-colored comforter set.  As soon as it is finished, we will post a picture!

On Wednesday, I had physical therapy in Carmel.  My knee continues to heal, but I unfortunately twisted it funny at work at the end of July so recovery slowed down a bit because of that.  However, the PT says that in the next couple of weeks I should be able to do more strength training and start (lightly) using the treadmill again!  Hallelujah!

After PT, I went to my parents' house to continue going through my stuff.  I'm to the point now where I'm mainly getting rid of things I no longer need and separating things to throw away and things to donate.  Eric and I had some brother-sister bonding time with a trip to Taco Bell to partake in their $2 meal deals.  We're big spenders, that's for sure.  Afterward, my mom accompanied me to David's Bridal so that I could pick up a bridesmaid dress for my friend Katie's wedding in January.

My mom seems to be enjoying her classroom this year.  There are only five babies in her room right now, and she really likes all of her co-workers.  I swear the names of the babies in her room get weirder and weirder every year.  The ones I can remember are Sawyer, Riley, McKenna, and Finnegan.  I'm pretty sure that I can't remember the last name because it is a more normal name...Lucas, maybe?  Anyway, it is always interesting to hear her stories about the new milestones that the infants are reaching.

On Thursday, we attempted to finish painting the guest room but encountered a snag.  I was up on a ladder edging by the ceiling and the doorbell rang, so I went to answer it.  After that, I got distracted for a few minutes and when I got back to the room, my tray of paint (which had previously been perched on top of the ladder) was face-down on our carpet.  Matt and I soaked the area with water and tried to sop up the mess with paper towels but after some advice from my dad, we ended up renting a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner from our local Sear's Hardware.  $25 and lots of water later, our carpet is no longer covered in "Champagne Bubbles"-colored paint.

Matt had a doctor's appointment in Lafayette on Friday so we took the trip up there.  After the appointment, had dinner on Purdue's campus at Noodles and Company.  It was an enjoyable day.

Eric moved in to his dorm room on the 4th floor of Wiley Hall (this will be his third year in the same room) on Saturday.  He has his car, the Silver Bullet (a 2008 (?) Dodge Caliber) on campus this year, but all of his stuff wouldn't fit in one load so Mom and I took the minivan up with the rest of his belongings.  After putting everything in his room, we had breakfast at Triple X Restaurant.  Triple X is one of the oldest drive-in restaurants in the country (although there is no drive-in option anymore) and is know for their chop steak hamburgers (the best is the Purvis Burger, named for Purdue football great Duane Purvis. It has peanut butter on it!) and root beer.  It is a favorite of Purdue students, especially Thursday through Saturday nights.  It was also featured in "Drive-ins, Diners, and Dives" on the Food Network.

Speaking of food, the TV show "Man vs. Food" was in Indy for last week's episode and the star came to Bub's Burgers (another favorite!) an Carmel.  Bub's features delicious burgers, including the 22-ounce "Big Ugly."  If you eat one, you get your picture on the wall (Dad, Eric, Nathan, and Zach have all conquered it).  Two gets you a larger head shot, three gets you a poster, and four gets you a life-sized picture.  No one in Bub's history has ever eaten 4, but the Man vs. Food guy attempted.  What a wimp, he only finished two!  We were really rooting for him, though!  We think that next he needs to eat at Bub's Cafe, which has pancakes the size of dinner plates and if you eat a tall stack of them (I can't remember how many that is), you get your picture on the wall.  Last we heard, no one has ever completed this feat.

That is all for now!  We hope you have a great week!

At Bub's back in May.  Eric, Trent, and Zach on the right side of the table all have Big Uglies!

Stacey and Matt

8/15/2010

Happy Sunday!

We have still been working hard to finish painting our guest bedroom.  Unfortunately, deep red and blue are very hard colors to cover with beige!  There are still parts that need a third coat so the room is still not 100% finished.

Yesterday (Saturday), my parents and brother and Grandma & Grandpa Seitz came over for lunch.  They came bearing all sorts of goodies:  a couple housewarming gifts (you can't go wrong with an electric skillet, Kroger gift card, or movie theatre gift certificates!), food to contribute for lunch (7-layer pasta salad from mom and lots of yummy desserts from Grandma), and a bed for the guest bedroom (donated by Mom and Dad's neighbor, Cathy Beadle)!  The bed is currently being stored in pieces in our guest bathroom until we can get another layer of paint on the walls.

Lunch got off to an interesting start yesterday.  I had worked until 7:30 am and started the crock pot for pulled pork as soon as I got home at 8.  When I woke up at 11:30 to finish preparing, the meat wasn't nearly cooked enough.  Apparently 4 hours is not enough time to cook a 5 lb. cut of pork, even if there is a 4-hour option on the crock pot!  As Matt finished picking up the house and vacuuming (he had done a lot the night before while I was at work, but there were still little things to finish), I quickly went to Target for plan B: cheeseburgers.  Everything worked out just fine, but now Matt and I have LOTS of pulled pork for sandwiches.  If anyone wants some, feel free to stop by!

When I got home from work yesterday morning, not only was the house nearly spotless, but I had a bouquet of beautiful pink roses and orange lilies waiting for me.  Thanks, Matt!

After everyone left after lunch, Matt and I opted for a nap since I had only had 3 hours of sleep that day.  When I woke up, the clock said 7:30 and I got really nervous because I thought I had slept until 7:30 in the morning on Sunday!  I frantically texted my friend Alyssa to apologize for missing her birthday party (we were all supposed to go out to celebrate on Saturday night) before I realized that it was still Saturday and I hadn't missed anything!  Matt and I went out to Indianapolis to a town called Broad Ripple for the night to celebrate Alyssa's 22nd birthday with friends.  Broad Ripple is a little section of town mostly occupied by young professionals and is known for unique shops and restaurants, as well as a couple blocks of comedy, night, and dance clubs.

The big news in the Draper family is that they have a new addition!  Matt's parents are now the proud parents of an American eskimo puppy named Tinkerbell.  Unfortunately their oldest dog, Polly, passed away a couple weeks ago at the ripe old age of 18.  We hear that Tinkerbell is getting along with the other two dogs (Ariel and Aladdin) just fine, but she is very curious and likes to try and get into everything!

That is all for now!  We are hoping to have a fun-filled (or at least more relaxing) week coming up.  After Monday I don't work again for 5 days so we are planning on possibly making a trip to the Indiana State Fair for some sheep and pig petting, ferris wheel riding, and deep friend food eating.  The delicacy this year?  Deep fried butter.  I think I'm going to pass on that one, haha.  In just a few days my brother Eric will go with friends to the fair to see comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham perform with his unique cast of puppets.  The tickets were a birthday present back in February, so I know he is very anxious to finally use them!

Oh, and I just noticed but unfortunately the Colts just lost in their first preseason game to the San Francisco 49ers.  Of course, this will be no reflection of what the real season will hold since they didn't even play their starters (at this point the Colts are still trying to figure out which rookies they will keep for the season).  We are looking forward to a great season of Colts football coming up!

Have a great week,
Stacey and Matt

Short entry

Hey everyone,

This well be a semi-short entry since we just blogged a few days ago.  We will try to post every Sunday, so I'm just catching you all up to this point!

On Wednesday, I completed my Multispecialty Internship class at work.  It was a 5-week intensive class covering everything you may ever encounted on a Medical-Surgical floor.  I'm glad to be finished with it because at the end of the 9 hours my brain would be so fried that all I wanted to do was sit and veg!  I had to take a pre-test before the class started and I got a whopping 63% on that.  However, I must have learned something from the class because I got an 89% on the post-test!  To pass the class, an 80% was required.

On Friday, I was very excited to get a new cell phone, an iPhone 4G.  They are in high demand right now and it took 1.5 weeks to arrive at the local AT&T store.  I am having a good time figuring out all the features.  Some of the best I have discovered are 1.) Ping Chat, which allows Alex and I to communicate via text message at no charge (before, it cost $0.25 each way to text between America and Germany!) and 2.) Words With Friends, which Eric and I have been enjoying.  It is a Scrabble game that you can play with other people, even if you aren't near them.  In our current game, Eric is successfully whooping me.

Yesterday (Saturday), Matt and I attending the wedding of my friends Jennilyn and Andrew.  I have been friends with Jennilyn since 8th grade and Andrew since freshman year of high school.  The two finally tied the knot after having dated since our junior year of high school.  The ceremony was held in Jennilyn's home church with both a pastor and a priest presiding (Andrew is Catholic).  The reception included red and white polka-dotted tablecloths, red gerbera daisies and roses, individual cakes for each table, and of course lots of dancing.  It was nice to see a lot of my friends...since we live 45-minutes from most of them, I don't feel like I see them often enough!  JL and Andrew will be moving to Kansas this upcoming Wednesday.  I will be sad to see them go, but Andrew is starting grad school for his Ph.D in Economics at Kansas University.  The two recently got a dog (Zoey) and we have been joking that she should have named her Toto!

Matt and I have been busy painting our guest bedroom.  I am so happy to see the ugly red and blue walls disappear!  So far we are finished with the ceiling and have nearly one coat of paint on the walls.  We hope to have it fully painted by Tuesday.  It probably would have been further along if we hadn't had to make several trips to Menard's for additional supplies!  When it is finished, the walls will be "Champagne Bubbles" (aka cream/off-white) and there will be a full bed in there.  We just ordered the comforter, which is sort of a deep lilac color.  I am excited to see the whole thing put together!

We were planning on taking a day trip to see my former roommate/Maid of Honor Emily in Chicago today, but we decided that it would be too rushed...we didn't realize when we planned the trip that I had to work at 8 am tomorrow.  Emily is interning at Sara Lee foods in Chicago and is living in the immediate downtown area.  Unfortunately, we will not be able to visit her up there before she moves back to Purdue for the school year.

That is it for now!  We hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Stacey and Matt

The guest room thus far

With the happy couple!

Joining the blogging world!

With our busy schedules, it is sometimes hard for Matt and I to keep in touch with everyone as often as we would like.  That is why, following in Dad's footsteps, we are creating this blog!  The goal is to be able to post one entry per week to keep everyone informed of our lives here in Avon.

Last week, I started working night shift at Methodist Hospital.  I have been working day shift (as well as taking some classes for new Registered Nurses) since I started at the end of May, but now it is time to transition in to my actual full-time night position.  Right now my schedule is still a little strange because I have at least one class a week that is during the day, plus I am working about 2 1/2 night shifts in order to get all of my hours.  However, soon I will be fully on nights and when that happens I will work three 12-hour shifts per week (as well as any additional hours that I decide to pick up if my unit needs more workers).  It is exciting to be figuring out my role, but I like getting things done during the day so sleeping until 2:30pm on the days I work is still very foreign to me!

Matt has been very busy around our house.  We finished moving my belongings out of my Purdue apartment last week and we are slowly but surely retrieving the rest of my stuff from my parents' house, so needless to say we are still working on putting things away!  His other project right now is the lawn.  He has decided that he wants the nicest looking lawn in the neighborhood so he has been seeding, fertilizing, weeding, and watering in order to reach his goal!  Can you tell that he is a real homeowner now?

We are very happy with some new furniture that we purchased a few weeks ago:  a faux-leather couch (that reclines!) and a sofa table.  Although we really liked the old sofa from Mom and Dad's basement, it was 12-years old and sank nearly to the ground when we sat on it!  We decided that we would take advantage of a good 4th of July sale at Ashley Furniture and spend just a little bit of our new homebuyer tax credit to purchase our new furnishings.

In addition to the lawn, Matt is very proud of his little nook/sun room that comes off of the kitchen.  He has his exercise bike in there, as well as the couch that used to be in our living room.  He topped it off with a big blue rug and a small bookshelf (both from my apartment), as well as a lamp that Grandma and Grandpa Ward gave me and now he has a nice exercise/reading room.

I have been enjoying using various kitchen gadgets that were given to us as wedding gifts.  Last week I used our new crock pot to make barbeque pork, as well as some little smokies weenies for some friends that came over to see the house!  We have also tested the waffle maker (several times...waffles are delicious!) and the electric skillet.

Speaking of wedding gifts, we apologize profusely for not having sent thank-you's yet.  Trust me, they would have been sent out at least a month ago except they were included in our photography package and they still haven't arrived!  I hate waiting so long to send thank-yous but in the mean time just let us say THANK YOU SO MUCH for the wedding gifts and for your attendance at our wedding!  We had a wonderful time and everything was absolutely perfect and exactly how we envisioned it.  Well, besides the rain...but that didn't end up being bad at all :)  If rain on your wedding day is good luck, a power outage must be awesome luck, right?

Oh, and we had a wonderful time in Hawaii on our honeymoon!  We were on the island of Oahu and we stayed about a 5-minute walk from Waikiki Beach.  We were very close to shopping as well and it was fun to explore the streets of Waikiki at night and people-watch.  We also enjoyed snorkeling, especially at Hanamau Bay (a nature preserve) and Three Rivers (on the north shore, near Waimea Bay).  We saw huge, beautiful fish and coral reefs, and even a family of squid!  One day we also took a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center to learn more about the island and to partake in a famous hog roast.  However, we ended up buying the wrong tickets and didn't get to attend the luau where the pig was actually roasted.  But we did get to enjoy is buffet style!  After dinner we watched a traditional Hawaiian dance show, complete with fire!  The rest of our trip was spent exploring Oahu (we rented a car), eating seafood and enjoying mixed drinks (I even had one in a pineapple!), and relaxing on the beach.  When can we go back?!

Anyway, that is all for now!  There are a lot of happenings this weekend, so stay turned for the next chapter of the Draper Diaries!

Love,
Stacey and Matt

Snorkeling at Hanamau Bay

Enjoying a princess drink (yes, that is what it was really called!) out of a pineapple!

Before entering Hanamau Bay

A beautiful North Shore sunset