Happy first day of Advent!

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

I have been ready to decorate our house for Christmas since before the sale was even finalized so we ended up decorating the inside on Monday evening.  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Seitz for so many great decorations!  The house looks great and all of those ornaments that Grandma Ward and Mom have been giving me for years are perfect on our tree.  Towards the end of decorating we were actually having a hard time finding enough space for all of them!

My parents and Eric traveled to Baltimore to see Uncle Tom, Aunt Kathy, Allison, and Scott for the holiday.  It sounds like they had an enjoyable time running a 7k race, watching Rambo and Cookie play together, shopping, watching the new "Harry Potter" movie, and of course eating turkey!

I worked Tuesday night and then we headed down to northern Kentucky on Wednesday after I had gotten a little sleep.  It poured the entire way there and roads were packed with holiday travelers.  The drive was rough but we made it and enjoyed a nice pre-Thanksgiving meal of turkey and all the trimmings with Matt's dad's side of the family.

On Thursday we went to Matt's Aunt Karen's new house for a Thanksgiving meal at noon with his mom's side.  Their new house is quite nice and the basement was a perfect place for a meal (who knew that a pool table with plywood on top would be such a great eating surface?)!  After lunch/dinner some people went into a post-meal coma while others watched football or played "Pictionary."

That evening Matt and I went with Matt's parents and brother Rob to see the new Harry Potter movie.  We all enjoyed it and I'm already for the next and final installment of the series!

We had planned on coming home on Thursday evening but it was still raining pretty heavily (and the precipitation turned to snow at one point) so we opted to leave Friday morning instead.

On Friday evening I had to work but I really wanted to put Christmas lights up on the outside of the house so I quickly took down our outdoor autumn decorations and hung lights on the porch and one of the bushes in the front.  I think they look great, but I'm a bit biased :)

Oh, here is some exciting news: I have a job interview at Riley Hospital for Children on Tuesday!  It is for a night shift position in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.  I am learning a lot on the floor where I currently work but I have always wanted to be a pediatric nurse so this opportunity to interview was impossible to pass up.  Please pray for me this Tuesday--I am really hoping for this job!

On that note, congratulations to my cousin Allyson Roelofs on landing her first job as a registered dietitian! She will be moving to Davenport, Iowa sometime after the new year to work at a retirement community.

I think that is all for now!  We hope that you all have a great week!

Stacey, Matt, and Thor

Our tree!

Quick blurb

This will be a short entry since I blogged not too long ago!

We are looking forward to going to Kentucky for Thanksgiving with Matt's family on Wednesday.  His parents are hosting dinner at their house on Wednesday and his Aunt Karen is hosting the meal at she and her husband's new house on Thursday.  My parents and Eric are traveling to Baltimore to see Uncle Tom, Aunt Kathy, Allison, and Scott for the holiday.  Have a safe trip!

I have already finished writing our Christmas cards and am now just waiting until a more holiday-appropriate time to mail them all!  I have been getting antsy about decorating the house for the holidays so I wrote Christmas cards (while listening to our favorite Indiana-based a capella group, Straight No Chaser, belt out holiday hits) to pacify myself.  I have also already wrapped a few gifts and there are currently two strands of Christmas lights on one of the bushes in front of our house.

We will soon be the proud owners of a treadmill!  The console on Dad's kept burning out and after it had been replaced several times, the company opted to let him get a new treadmill as opposed to continually having to fix the old one.  Dad's new treadmill arrived on Friday and on Saturday Eric came home from Purdue to help Dad move the monster into the basement.  Of course with a new treadmill comes re-decorating!  I guess they are planning to paint the walls Colts blue and white and to mount the television on the wall, putting it in a better viewing position for running and using the other exercise equipment.  The console on the treadmill that Matt and I are inheriting is working for the time being, so we are eager to get it to our house while it still has some juice!

That's it for now!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Stacey, Matt, and Thor

p.s.
Enjoy a few pictures from the Colts game that we went to!

I'm a neglectful blogger

Hey everyone!


Sorry that there has been such a huge delay in blog posts (ahem, 3 weeks...).  We have been pretty busy and whenever I think about blogging it is late and I just decide to sleep instead, haha.

I love Halloween and so I made sure to request that I have Halloween off of work.  What I didn't realize was that in Avon, trick-or-treating was the day before Halloween this year!  As I backed out of the driveway to go to work, little gremlins and mini-Miley Cyrus's were running all around so I knew that I was going to miss handing out candy at our house for the first time.  Matt performed the duty, however, and told me that our neighborhood children are ravenous and we ran out of candy after an hour.

To make up for missing trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, Matt and I took Thor over to my parents' house on Halloween to hand out candy there.  There were a lot of kids this year and it was fun to see all of their creative costumes.

Thor also got to meet my parents' dog, Rambo.  The two seem to get along well but Rambo had no trouble letting Thor know when he was getting annoyed.

Thor got his first haircut on November 1.  He now looks more like a well-loved house pet and less like a stray!  It was also nice to receive a package from Aunt Susan and Uncle John's dog, Gus, for Thor.  Thor got lots of tasty treats to welcome him to the family!  Thanks again!

On Friday, November 5, Eric came home from school for the weekend. He came over that evening and he, Matt, and I had a good time eating pizza and watching a cheesy horror movie "Tales from the Darkside" from the '90s.

On Saturday, November 6, Mom and I got to go to my friend Katie's bridal shower.  Katie was in my and Matt's wedding as a bridesmaid and I will serve the same duty in her January 8 wedding.  The shower took place in Geist, a high-end suburb of Indy that is known for its nice reservoir.  We ate at a restaurant called Bella Vita which looked over the reservoir.  We played games and it was nice to meet some of the other people who are involved in the wedding.

After the shower, Matt and I headed down to Kentucky because we planned to go to Matt's friend Nathan's wedding that evening.  This proved, however, to be an impossible feat.  Katie's shower began at 12:30 in Indy and Nathan's wedding was at 6pm in northern Kentucky.  Due to me leaving the shower a little late and running into quite a bit of traffic, we were unable to make the wedding.  We also opted to skip the reception ad we were both pretty wiped out.  Instead we spent the evening with Matt's parents and brother Rob watching all of the dogs run around.  Good thing we just went ahead and had Nathan and Heather's gift sent to them!

Last week, I decided to try yoga for the first time.  The mother of two boys that I used to babysit for, Gina, is the office manager of a yoga studio that has locations in Broad Ripple (near downtown Indy) and in Carmel (near my parents' house).  This yoga studio is unique in that it is "hot" yoga.  They crank up the heat in the studio to the high-90s, making for a sweat-dripping, soul-cleansing experience.  I have been to a couple classes now and I have really been enjoying this new hobby.

On Saturday (the 13th) I went to Riley Hospital for Children to train as a volunteer tour guide.  Riley is building a new family tower that will soon house all of the inpatients.  I wanted to see what it looks like so I went to the training session and am going to give a tour next Monday (the 22nd) to employees.  Some of the units will begin moving next spring.

On Sunday (14th) Matt and I went to the Indianapolis Colts vs. Cincinnati Bengals football game at Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indy.  Our tickets to the sold-out game were in the middle of one of the end zones.  We were able to see the action surprisingly well and had a great time cheering the Colts to victory!

Matt has two exams today that he has been studying tirelessly for.  Good luck, Matt!

My cousin Allyson Roelofs had a job interview yesterday (Tuesday) for a registered dietitian position in Iowa.  The company flew her out for the day and it sounds like everything went great!  She says that they will probably offer her the job.  She has another interview (in Iowa again) on Thursday and a different company is flying her out.  Well Allyson, I hope you like corn!

Now it seems that we are all up-to-date!  Sorry again for such a delay in posts.

I will post some pictures from the Colts game within the next couple of days.  Matt is at school right now and all the pictures are on his laptop!

We hope you all have a great rest of your week!  Can you believe that Turkey Day is next Thursday already?!

Stacey, Matt, and Thor