Christmas, Sickness and a Happy New Year!

Our Christmas Break...

Instead of our traditional holiday dinner (which we are now reserving for a future winter night) we settled for cans of chicken noodle soup and low-fat food items that would keep our stomach happy. Matt had his gull bladder removed and Kate enjoyed a lovely bout of the stomach flu. Thankfully it all happened over break...and we are both back to normal and ready to teach our energetic students again. The blessing and the curse of being a teacher :)

After being snowed in from blizzard 08, We were able to spend a week up in GR ...going to multiple family Christmas parties and catching up with many good friends. Matt received an offical Obama Presidential collectors plate from his brother, fresh out of the kiln complete with a certificate of authenticity. As you can see the Republicans in the room were thrilled.

New Years was celebrated Centreville style...as Rachel, Reuben, Eric and Jenni made the journey down (with the help of Garmin) stopping in Kzoo for dinner. The Depottys were sorely missed as the girls started off the New Year well by dominating the competitions. Even winning the coveted Trivial Pursuit crown. Who has the trophy anyway?

It's now back to the daily routine and as grad classes pick up again we were thankful to have had such a restful break...even if was forced upon us by our respective ailments :)

Lately we've been spending our time outside bounding and leaping in new snow with Sydney...she seems to enjoy it. As do we.

So I have pretty much failed at keeping up at the blog lately so here goes for a quick update...

Matt and I have sucessfully spent 8 of the 9 past weekends not in Centreville and are looking forward to a few weekends at home for the next couple of weeks! :) Our travels the past three weeks have taken us up north, to the east side, and of course to good ole Grand Rapids.

Up North:

We took a weekend to get away and had a fantastic time despite the dreary weather. We stayed at the Homestead and spent the weekend winetasting and taking in the fall colors.

The East Side:

Last weekend we visited the Chatelains over in Novi. Matt C. cooked us some delicious lasagna and we spent the time just hanging out and catching up. It was great to finally see where they live, even though they are moving soon! We then got a chance to stop by and visit Matt's little brother Chris at Detroit Mercey on our way home :)

GRap:

Matt had his last class for his current grad class, which is always nice to have one of those end! I had a the chance to catch up with Annie and Rachel with lunch at Red Ball Jet Cafe...You should try it if you haven't..it's delicious !

Homecoming and Apple Picking

After a stressful week of float construction the Juniors came in with a disappointing 4th place. Just so everyone knows there are only 4 classes in high school so yes that is dead last. Come on if there was a 5th place they would get that too. Oh well. better luck next year! On the plus side the Depotty's made the journey to Centreville for a quick but eventful visit :)

After our dogs met and tried to attack each other (hence Sydney's total domination of Sadie) we journeyed to Hubbard's Orchard in Three Rivers. Upon arriving we were directed to a vast area filled with apples and grapes that we attempted to find after tasting the local brandy.

Bryan: "Excuse me sir...where can we find the brandy?"

Kate "Oh wait...we should have followed the spray-painted pink arrows on the sidewalk"

Matt "What else screams this way to brandy?"

Bryan and Matt were about to try the 150 proof grape brandy but their plans were thwarted by other visitors so we made our way to the grapes. They weren't too dissapointed after tasting the potent 120 proof pear brandy.

Grape picking was quite entertaining, between throwing grapes at each other and eating them it's surprising we ended up with a full basket. However it was not surprising that Byran had purple spit! Next we made our way to the apple trees.... on the way their we had a hilarious/disturbing situation involving a full moon. For more details you'll just have to ask us later...

Finally as we made our way back to the orchard with our 16lbs of grapes and our 1/2 bushel of apples we suddenly realized that this might be an expensive venture...Byran and Matt nervously waited for our total to be rung up and were astonished when the woman said...

That'll be $6.40

What a great weekend.

Fall

Not a lot of news to report. Just a pretty normal weekend in Centreville. Fall is here so we've begun the process of raking the crazy amount of leaves that fall into our yard....well that or Matt just mows over them with the John Deere: :)
And now we move into the business that is High School homecoming. As advisers we have the joy of supervising the creation of floats, or in Matt's case golf carts. Cass homecoming starts this week and our theme is "Old School Music" which according to my students is MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice...any suggestions?

The Fair

I took my wife out on the town tonight and by town I mean the dusty, farm animal filled, greese smelling county fair. The highlights of our evening:

1. Meeting Pogo and Roo the sad looking red kangaroos in the "exotic animal" section. We were going to see the 6 ft alligator but soon realized it cost $1...per person! We were on a limited budget.

2. Getting in free...it pays to know everyone in town. I am now the mayor of three cities.

3. Treating my wife to 1/2 an elephant ear. (actually he only gave me 1/4 bc he gave the other half to the school secretary working the gate...how romantic!)

(pfft...this night was all about romance to begin with...hence our next adventure to the cow barn. )

4. The Cow Barn...need I say more.

5. The second cow barn. There were long-haired Scottish cattle. Kate said I could get one if Bryan got Amy a puppy. (Come on Amy!!)

6. Determing what type of deep-fried candy bar/twinkie/oreo to get.

7. Then realizing how disgusting that actually was...but secretly still wanting to try one.

8. Taunted by every kind of Carnie folk imaginable saying I could win whatever prize I wanted if I just gave them a dollar. Pfft, I've seen the Simpsons, I know the Carnie Tricks.

9. A romantic walk home under the stars with the sound of raging tractor pulls in the background.

10. Arriving home to find that our dog didn't pee all over the house as we left her out of her cage for the first time while we were gone! Whoo hoo.

Our blog...

As we find ourselves in Centreville for one more year we thought that this might be a fun way to keep in touch with all of you who are oh so far away. We know you are all wondering what exciting things happen in our little town! Feel free to leave lots of comments and remember you are always welcome to visit.

Sydney

For those of you who don't know yet... we got a dog. Her name is Sydney and she has been quite entertaining to say the least. Besides her selective hearing and her persistence at using the bathroom indoors she has been a great addition to the Baer household. We recommend that everyone get a dog like her...especially the Depottys :)