Accessibility Notice

This blog is not listed with Blogger or any of the search engines, however, there has recently been some visitors from the Internet that (as far as we know) are not family or friends. Therefore, we'd like to start keeping the blog a little more private and, starting January 13, our blog can only be accessed by those invited by us. We will be sending out an invitation email to those that we think read the blog. Unfortunately, those that want to keep up with us will need to sign in with a Blogger or Google account (Gmail email IDs included). We're sorry for the inconvenience this will cause some of you.

If you are reading this and HAVEN'T received an email invite by December 27, email one of us (if you don't have one of our emails call us). We don't have everyone's email address and have surely missed someone.

Note: you don't have to sign up for Gmail when you sign up for a Blogger account.

Visitation

The results are in and it turns out Patrick did better than expected- all A's! His first 4.0 ever! He's now officially 1/4 of the way through school and very psyched about his grades.

The two nephews are very cute (possibly too cute for their own good) and Patrick has enjoyed playing with them and having Mark and Daisy around. The whole family (minus Sally and Atalie) decorated the Christmas tree Wednesday evening. Following the tree decorating, Patrick drove up to Brad's house in GR and had a fun time visiting with him and some friends. Brad got a Xbox 360 a while back and the two of them stayed up way too late playing it. But it was fun! We went ice skating yesterday evening with Mike, Jim, and Jill which was great fun and then picked Sally up late and drove to Okemos.

Home for Christmas

We made the long trip from Missouri yesterday, foolishly braving freezing rain, sleet, and eventually snow. To be sure, the roads were less than inviting; but we did it anyway and were safe. We spent the night in K-zoo again this time due to a snow storm. Patrick gingerly made his way to Okemos this morning to see the family that has already began to arrive for the Holidays and Atalie went up to GR with her Mom this afternoon.

Finals went more or less well and he's glad to be done with his first of (hopefully) four semesters at graduate school. He is excited to find out his grades on Tuesday as he thinks he did rather well (refrigerator material!). Atalie sent out a bunch of resumes and is anxiously awaiting responses.

It is nice to be back with family again but we can't help being a little apprehensive about leaving our apartment alone for three weeks. More time to blog now so expect updates more regularly. We're with most the people we blog for so maybe there won't be more updates... :)

Finals!

Nothing exciting to report except that Finals are next week! I have one 'actual' final exam to take in a class, two presentations, three papers (two of which are on basically the same thing), and two presentations. I am officially done with classes in my first semester at Grad School and expect good results. I finally got my act together. This semester has been a good growing experience and I am really glad I made the decision to come down here. It sucks being away from all my friends and family but I think I made the right decision. I fit in really well down here and am happy. But don't worry, my heart still lies in good ol' Michigan.

Atalie has applied for 10 jobs this week (go her!), 3 regular jobs and 7 Ad agencies. Hopefully she'll hear back from some of them soon. I know she hates job hunting and I'm really proud of her. It didn't take too much poking and prodding to get her going at it either. :)

Jill: The package has been delivered. Repeat: the package has been delivered.
We played merry messenger last night for one of our friends (Jill) from GVSU who has a friend that lives down here. She's been suggesting that we meet and finally had an excuse for us to do it. Suzy (her friend) is really nice and I can see how she and Jill became friends. We spent around 20 minutes over at her apartment just chatting about ourselves to get to know each other and decided that the next time we plan something we should give them a call. It's always nice meeting new people!

We'll see most of you readers (all 7 of you) the end of next week! Can't wait until this is over!

Oh yeah, I finally got to play with the X-ray gun. Next time...

Taking Care of Business

While we've become a bit lazy about some things around here lately (laundry all over the floor, and a monster dish pile that has taken 3 or 4 batches of wash n dry to take care of, for examples), we've been getting other stuff taken care of.

Thank goodness, our futon has finally had the broken part replaced, for starters. Just past a month since calling the store, they got around to calling us back with arrangements for picking it up this week. Patrick's semester long projects are due this coming week, and we spent the weekend in the computer lab, so he could finish up most of the work on those. I also, after much procrastination, have started my job hunt. (yuck)

Luckily, while still in Texas, I revised my cover letter, began editing my resume, and started a list of agencies I could look into, so it made getting started a little easier for me. So far I have focused on a few of the agencies to dig up some information on, I've looked up specific job postings on career-finding websites (some advertising related, some not- such as receptionist jobs), and I am almost finished with two applications.

Only two more weeks before we're already back in Michigan for Christmas break, and it looks like that time will continue being spent taking care of business: studying for exams for Patrick, job hunting for me, dropping off a package for a friend of ours (probably late this week, Jill!), completing the last of the Christmas shopping, and maybe hosting a movie night or something at our apartment for our buddies to attend before everyone leaves town. Hope you're all staying pleasantly busy too! :)

A welcome break

Thanksgiving was great! It was nice to visit with family and friends that I haven't seen for three months. The drive up was pretty uneventful; Atalie and I rotated driving (of course I had to drive through St. Louis and Chicago!) and spent tuesday night at Atalie's younger sister Brittany's new apartment in Kalamazoo. I drove over to Okemos the next morning and the two of them went up to GR. We both spent Thanksgiving day with our separate families and Mr. A dropped Atalie off in Okemos later in the evening (Thanks!). Following an early morning on Black Friday we drove to GR and spent the evening hanging out with two of Atalie's high school friends. Saturday we relaxed and spent time with her family and watched the Lakers beat North Dakota! Saturday night we spent visiting with our GV friends which was great fun and then went to bed only to get up early Sunday for the drive back. I drove all but the last 100 miles, which passed quickly due to Atalie reading out loud to us. We made it here in record time (with only going five over) 10 hours, 45 minutes, including 30 minutes for stops. The car obviously survived but we definitely should check into getting the cruise control fixed...

Glad to get back in the swing of things, but we miss everyone back home! See you in 3 weeks!

Getting in the swing of things

Now that I've been in Missouri for about a month, I'm starting to get a little routine going. Of course it's only temporary since I'll be planning on getting a job in a few months, but in the meantime, life seems to be falling into place.

Our apartment is slowly coming along, as I've gotten basically everything put away and cleaned up, and the maintenance guy has been over a couple times to get some things taken care of like the patchy tiling in the bathroom, yellow blinds, and the gap under our front door letting in a nasty draft. Things should be even better around here after we pick up a few more belongings when we visit Michigan next week, and when we have our futon replaced. Have we told you about that yet??? The darn $600 futon got a major crack in it for no reason less than 3 months after receiving it, and after we called them out on it, they told us to wait 3-4 weeks before we could get it fixed since they're "totally out" of our specific futon. That month is running out and I do believe I had better hear from them soon....

Aside of that, I've been enjoying my time off of school getting a lot of reading done- mostly murder mysteries- and I recently started exercising again. I tried aerobic kickboxing at first, but after nearly throwing up and dying of lack of oxygen, I decided to start out smaller with some yoga. Today (about 3 weeks later) I tried the kickboxing DVD again, and I did a lot better! I definitely notice the difference the yoga has made in my muscle strength and flexibility!!! (Although I felt like I'd nearly throw up again- best to wait a while after eating before doing extensive exercise, I suppose. haha)

I've also been hanging out with Patrick and his friends on the weekends. Last Saturday, we went to a cowboy bar for one of our pal's b-day. I rode the mechanical bull there!!! I was pretty nervous, but after watching a couple of our party members give it a try, I decided to have a go. There's a guy who operates it and he'll adjust the skill level for each person, so it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought. Still didn't stay on very long though! Haha- as soon as we get some pictures from our friends, I'll have to post one!

In the meantime, we just got a pic from one of our friend's Halloween party, so here we are as Jack and Jill! It might be hard to see, but we smeared black eye shadow on us and put bandaids on to simulate injuries from falling down a hill, Patrick had gauze wrapped around his broken crown under the hat, and we don't have our dented pail with us in the picture either. But hopefully you can tell that we put together a good couple's costume! :)