Thanksgiving

Thursday we had a great afternoon in Fort Wayne with Joe's side of the family at Steve and Sue's. I wish I had gotten my camera out to actually take some pictures there! We had a full house at our house on Friday for Thanksgiving. Dad and Grandma & Grandpa came down from Fort Wayne and Kirstin and Nathan came up for the weekend from Atlanta. It worked out great. Everyone pitched in for food and it was all wonderful! Good enough we are still even eating the leftovers!! MMmmmm... We even got to Skype with the Drakes in Colorado... despite a few problems with the microphone it was still great to "see" them! :) I definitely have a lot of things to be thankful for this year. Here are a few pics from the afternoon.

Kirstin and Nathan brought Marley (their dog) so this is where Parker spent the weekend hiding in our bathroom....

Joe has been working on the Christmas lights. Its fun to finally have a house to put things up in and decorate! So far we are only the second house in the neighborhood to have any colored lights up.... hopefully the neighbors don't all think it looks tacky! Joe's been up on the roof multiple times now which seems to be scaring all of our older neighbors. They have come over a few times to help "hold the ladder" once they see him up there. This weekend I was on the driveway while Joe was climbing up there to hang the wreath and I heard the older lady across the street come out her front door and yell to her husband, "Jaaaaackkkk... he's on the roof again!!!". LOL... at least they are watching out for him.

One Year!

Can you believe it has been a year? It amazes us to look back on this past year and how busy it has been and how many changes it has brought to our lives... and how many of them that we are thankful for. It still makes us both smile to think back to our wedding day and how much fun we had, but also saddens us to think of all our friends back home that we miss so much. We wish we could do it again every year! Thank you to everyone who made that day so special and fun for us!! We will never forget it!

We had a great anniversary weekend. Luckily it was both of our weekends off so we had both Saturday and Sunday to spend the day together. Saturday night we went to Ruth's Chris for dinner. They had rose petals spread out on the table for us and treated us to a dessert. The food was great... very rich! Sunday was also Ashley's birthday so she came over with Keaton for some birthday cake. Dad was down to visit Cindi and their new addition, Eli, so we got to see him for a bit also. Sunday was also Mike and Erica's anniversary.... Happy Anniversary!!! :)

We made sure to dig out the wrapped up cake in our freezer and share a piece on our anniversary. We were trying to follow the tradition of eating the top tier of your wedding cake, however the night of our reception we were pulled aside by the staff of the reception hall to tell us they had served the top tier of our cake because they ran out, but would be sure to get us another! Whoops....so... our "anniversary" cake was technically a couple weeks short of a year! :) It was still pretty good though!

As most people have heard by now I'll be changing jobs to a new hospital at the end of the month. I will still be doing babies but this will allow me to have my evenings open with Joe most of the time. The hopsital is also much closer. It's the same hospital Joe is at but will still be a different shift than him.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We had a very quiet Halloween evening! Joe wanted to hand candy out, and I wasn't so sure, but in the end I caved in. So we braved the crowds at Walmart running around piling their carts with candy... returned with seven or eight bags... only to have THREE tricker-treaters!!! THREE! Ok, so three doorbell rings, totaling four tricker-treaters! I know our sub-division doesn't have a lot of kids, but I didn't expect that low of numbers. I don't know what the heck we're going to do with all this candy!

Georgia on my mind....

We got home Wed afternoon from visiting Kirstin and Nathan in Atlanta. It was a fun trip and it was good to see them again and take a few days off from work. I wish I could talk them into moving back here... but then again they are a good excuse for little trips down South!

Joe's wrist seems to be fine... whew... He's already talking about wanting to go back again.

Their back-yard... still so nice and green!

On Sunday we hiked up Stone Mountain. It ended up being the perfect day. This is a shot of the "mountain" driving into the park.

View from the bottom

Kirstin and Nathan admiring the gum post....

Looking up at how far we have to go...

View of downtown Atlanta

Nathan pointing out the view of downtown and Buckhead

They took us to an AMAZING sushi restaurant....mmmmm

Wings and beer at Taco Mac!

A few shots from the drive home...

We drove through a cloud in the mountains... kinda weird...

.......these people REALLY like Halloween :) (and no this isn't Kirsins house, just one we saw while in Atlanta)

Rafting Pictures!

Joe is in the very front of the raft!

Rafting

Joe returned from his rafting trip on Monday night (well, really Tuesday morning by the time he got home) and had to be at work a few short hours later. He went with a group of guys from Parkview that he used to work with. They spent a couple days south of Charleston, West Virginia camping and white water rafting. Sounds like they all had a blast... with only a few minor injuries, including Joe's wrist. He heard a pop in it while paddling. The Dr. thinks he could have ruptured a ganglion cyst or tore one of the tendons above his thumb. Hopefully neither will require surgery, but we won't know for sure till next week. Until then he has to fumble on and off this "brace" that keeps him from moving it too much and he is supposed to ice it a few times a day. If it's still hurting next week he'll get an MRI on it. Unfortuately it's his right hand which makes it even more difficult. (I'll try to add some pictures later)

Other than that the last few weeks have been mostly quiet. I've been trying to recover from some sinus/allergy issues I've been having... but I'm finally feeling a little better. Seems like everyones allergies are pretty bad right now and there are definitely some colds/flus going around.

Friday we leave for ATLANTA!! Yay!! to see Kirstin and Nathan. It's nice to live a couple hours closer now to shorten the drive a bit. We can't believe it's been a year since we've been down there. We definitely owe them a few trips.