Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. Mom, Dad, Jake and Jaimie came to Ohio. We had been looking forward to it since the summer. They only had a little set back in Chicago on their way to Cleveland but they made it. It was such a blessing to have them here for the holiday. Mom and I cooked a huge meal on Thursday and we all just enjoyed hanging out. It was fun being able to show them Cuyahoga Falls and the surrounding areas. Everyone but Jaimie seemed to get along well with Henry. Jaimie did not like him at all in the beginning but on the last night she seemed to be warming up to him. The funny thing was that Henry really listened to my Mom. He would be doing something bad and she would pick him up and talk to him and for the most part he would stop or move on to something else :) We are so thankful that they were able to come and spend the holiday with us. We can't wait to see them soon.

Henry

Here is our newest little family member. Henry is now 9 weeks old and weights 13.2 pounds. When we got him he was 6 weeks and weighted 7.6 pounds. He loves to eat! Henry has a great personality and likes to play. He is still learning where he is suppose to go to the bathroom but he is getting better. He also loves to bite and pull on things. This a bad habit that we hope he grows out of :) Matt and Henry are best buddies. When Henry hears Matt start to open the door he runs to the door. Matt has been really good with him. He gets up with him in the middle of the night when he needs to go out, no matter the time or weather. Henry also knows that he can pretty much get away with anything when Matt is watching him. I have become the "bad cop" and Matt is the fun guy. Makes me a little worried about when we have kids :)Henry has been a great addition to our little family. We are excited about all the fun memories we are going to make with Henry. We will keep you posted on the adventures of Henry.

Long overdue update

Wow, it has been a long time since we have updated everyone. Where to start...well Matt finished his Internal Medicine and Psychiatry rotation and he is now on his Surgery rotation. He has had a lot of really neat opportunities. I was able to find a job. I'm working at a Hospital in Akron as a Guest Services Associate, which means that I am working on raising the patient satisfaction scores on the Oncology floor. I'm really liking the patient interaction and I'm learning how to work with all of the nurses :) Another exciting thing that has happen in our lives is that we got a puppy. He is an english bulldog and his name is Henry. He is really cute! Everything is going really well and we can't believe how fast time is flying.

Meeting Matt's fellow student doctors

Today we met the other students doing rotations with Matt and their significant others. We went to a Mexican place near our house. Everyone told stories about the rotation that they are on and gave opinions of the doctors. It was fun to hear what everyone was getting to do. I don't think any of us will be best buddies but it will nice to have a group of people to get together with.

Matt is on call this weekend which means he has to go in at 7 a.m. and he got home about 1:30 this afternoon. I really think that this is a great place for Matt to be learning. The Doctors really challenge him to think and know why and what things are. I'm really proud of Matt and how well he is doing. He is going to be a great doctor!

A Fun Night!

Matt and I have been so thankful to have the Laytons here in Cuyahoga. We have really enjoyed being able to spend time with all of them. Last night Matt and I watched Emi, Paige and Evan while Missy and Miles went out. We had a great time. We painted pumpkins, made ghosts and had dinner. It was fun to see the girls get so excited about painting. Matt was helping the girls and he said to Paige "lets make eyes on your pumpkin" so he is making perfect circles and then Paige takes her brush and swirls all the colors together. Matt's face was priceless and Paige was so proud of her work :) We had a really fun night!

Halloween

It has been really fun having a house that we have been able to decorate for Halloween. I thought that I would be crafty and make ghosts to set outside. It went pretty well but I think in the future I will let someone else be crafty and I will purchase their work :) Matt and I are excited to have trick o treaters. We have always bought candy and never really have had anyone come but we live in a great neighborhood that I'm sure we will have a lot of kids.

Flowers

In our yard we have a rose bush and this other tree that has pretty little flowers on it. Matt has been really sweet and has kept the vase full. I'm excited that we have been able to use the neat vase that Neil made me. If you would like to purchase one let me know and I'm sure Neil would love to make one for you :)

What to do?

If anyone would have asked if I thought I would be unemployed in October I would have said no way! But in fact I am. In the last two months I have become a professional interviewer. So what do I do with all that free time? Well I have my schedule of tv shows starting at 10 a.m to noon and then taking a break until 3 p.m. I have enjoyed having time to cook dinner and being able to bake. Unfortunately, Matt and I cannot keep up with everything I'm making. A few things I have made is an apple pie, different kinds of scones and breads. Here are some scones in these neat Martha Stewart gift bags.

The Outdoors

On this rotation Matt has a great schedule. He works for a few days and then has a few days off. On one of those days off we took a drive to look at the ski hills and falls near us. The water fall was very pretty. It was a short walk on a path to get to it. The ski hills were really funny to look at. They are hills not mountains. I'm pretty excited about them because they are about at my ski level but for Matt it may be a little boring. We are excited about them being so close. It only took us about 15 minutes to get there.

GO BRONCOS!!

Matt and I had a great time at the Bills/Broncos game. We drove to Buffalo, NY, which is about
3 1/2 hours from our house. The day was full of excitement. First started with a really rainy drive there. Matt had worked the night before so I was driving and there were a few times that I thought we were going to hydro plane into the car next to us. Don't worry Matt slept through it all :) It really wasn't that bad. So we get there and find a great, cheap parking spot and start walking to the stadium, of course in all our Bronco gear. Little did we know that we had to walk by the tailgating area. We only got razed a little there. We get to the gate to go in and I ask Matt where the tickets were? He starts to unzip his jacket pocket and it will not unzip. We fought with it for probably five minutes. Matt finally had to use his keys and tear the inside of his coat to get into the pocket to get the tickets. We can laugh now but it was pretty intense for awhile. We find our seats and thankfully there were other Bronco fans in front of us and behind us. But ALL around us was a crowd of rude, thuggy Bill fans. Matt and I have been to a few different stadiums to watch the Broncos and for the most part other fans are okay but Bill fans win for being the worst. For all the razing and hasseling that Bills fans gave us it was all worth it to see their faces when Elam kicked that last second field goal to win the game!! GO BRONCOS! We actually didn't take any pictures in the stadium but on the way home we documented our day. Oh and Matt ate 1/2 a dozen of Krispy Kreme donuts on the way home (we had just ate dinner too). Overall we had another fun adventure.

Real Life

Life has started to get back to the feel of "real life." Well kind of....Matt started his Pediatric ER rotation yesterday. It is at a Cleveland Clinic Hospital. He is really enjoying everything so far and learning a lot! It is so nice because so far when Matt gets home he gets to just hang out. I forgot how much I liked to watch t.v. with him :)

My days are consumed with sending out my resume and hoping someone will respond. I have had one interview for an insurance place but it was a 100% commission based and I don't think that is me. On Monday I go to a University near here and take a two hour skills test for a position there. We'll see how that goes. I'm sure there is something out there I just have to work on being patient.

Matt and I are really excited about this weekend. We get to go to the Buffalo Bills opening game and guess who they are playing (drum roll please) The Broncos!! Hopefully we will find some fellow Bronco fans.

East Coast Road Trip

Matt and I had an experience of a life time. We were able to take a 10 day road trip of the east coast. Our first stop was Niagra Falls. The Falls were very pretty. We were able to ride the Maid of the Mist right to the base of the Falls. This was amazing! Our next stop was Boston. While we were in Boston we walked the Freedom Trail. It was a 2.5 mile journey touring different historical sites in Boston. Towards the end of the walk was the Bunker Hill Monument . We were able to go to the top of the tower and it only took 294 stairs to the top! It was a hike but well worth it. After two days in Boston it was onto New York! We were able to stay on Staten Island at the Navy Base. It was a lot of fun to be able to ride the ferry back and fourth. We had great views of the city and the Statue of Liberty. We were so excited the first night we got there we found Bubba Gumps. This was our favorite resturant on our honeymoon. We did a lot of site seeing. We saw Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, 5th Avenue, Central Park and I'm sure that I am forgetting some. I think the neatest thing that we did was at Ground Zero you could take tours that were given by victims, love ones who lost someone or rescue workers. Our tour was led by a lady who lost her cousin on 9/11 and also by a man who did rescue work right after it had happened. While on our tour a fire started in one of the buildings that had been damaged after 9/11. Unfortunately, two New Yorker firefighters lost their lives that day. One of the men had survived the 9/11 blast.

New York is an amazing city. I think that we could have stayed weeks and still would have not seen everything. The night life was really neat. There were so many people at all hours. I don't think we got home any night we were there until around 2 a.m. I thought for sure I would be scared but out of all the cities we visited I felt most safe in New York. Matt became a great navigator of the subway. We were pros by the end of our stay :) There is so much more to say about New York but this post would be a book we still have several more stops on our trip.












The next stop on our trip was Philly. We saw the Liberty Bell and got to have the best philly cheese steak sandwich. After Philly it was onto Washington D.C. While in D.C. we toured the Holocaust museum, we saw the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the White House, Arlington Cemetery and the Washington Monument. We actually got to go to the top of the Monument. That was a lot of fun. D.C. is another city that we could have spent much more time exploring. About 5 minutes from where we stayed was Alexandria, VA. We ate dinner over there every night. We had this amazing seafood dinner and yummy Thai food. It was a quaint little town with a main street full of great places to eat and fun shops.


The second to last stop was Gettysburg. We watched a electronic map presentation of the battle and then we bought a CD tour for our car. It was a 3 hour tour that drove you through the battle field and told you a little about each place. We celebrated our 4 year anniversary at Gettysburg. Probably not the most romantic place but we felt like we had been celebrating our whole trip. I'm so thankful that we had the time to travel and spend so much time together. Our last stop on our trip was Hershey, PA. Wow, this was an experience. If you love chocolate you have to visit Hershey! As soon as you step out of your car you can smell chocolate. We took the tour and each had a yummy hershey treat. I had the best hot chocolate.



Matt and I had an amazing time on our road trip where we made so many memories and are excited to take our kids back someday to experience all that we did.

Ohio or Bust!

We made it! Matt did a great job driving the big rig and getting us unloaded. We love our new little house. It is slowly becoming our home. We have enjoyed taking our time unpacking and spending time exploring and being together. Once we download our pictures I will post some of our house.







Tomorrow is a big day for us we get our first washer and dryer delivered! We are officially adults :)

Another great thing about Cuyahoga is that the Laytons are here! We have really enjoyed being with the girls and getting to know Evan.

Matt and I are planning on taking a little road trip to the East coast and we are super excited about it!

We are starting a whole new chapter in our lives and are excited to share our adventures on our blog. I will try to embrace Matt's love of taking pictures so that we make sure that you all get to see what we see.

Third year...

Yesterday I finally finished my second year of school. I am officially a 3rd year! We will be staying in Kirksville for a few more weeks and then we move to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio where I will complete two years of rotations. My first rotation is Pediatrics. We can't wait to head East.

-Matt

The Start

So this is the beginning of our new blog! Last weekend Matt's younger brother, Neil, got married. It was the first time all five brothers have been together in 9 years. We had a blast. Here are some photos.