Us and Every Day

I think I only blog about the highlights of our life. The trips and the fun things we do here and there. It's easy to think only eventful things are worth talking about, but I don't want to forget about what our day to day life is right now - our routine, our little home, this early stage of our life together. It's a good time. I want to remember all these details. So, here are a few of them.

Here's our tiny front yard, landscaped by the one and only Michael Daetwyler. There's no one else you want in charge of your plants. Next to that is our view from our bedroom window over our two cute cars - our navy Corolla and our little blue truck, 89' Chevy S10. It used to be Michael's grandpa's truck. Those little blue cars are good to us. We have already put quite a few miles on them together.

We carpool with each other every day, which is the best bonus. It's an extra 45 minutes of our day that we get to spend together, and I love it. Sometimes we just fill it with NPR, on test days Michael studies the whole way, but sometimes we just laugh and laugh. 

Michael goes to dental school at IUPUI, and rocks it. He puts in so many hours. He's in his second of four years, which is the infamous year of the dental school experience. Third and fourth years are mostly clinical, so this year is just packed with bookwork and tests and boards. We hear it's a crazy busy time, especially second semester. You can usually find him studying, which means that sometimes you'll just find him passed out on the floor. It's pretty relentless, dental school. I'm so proud of Michael and how hard he works.

As for me, I retired from homework. I work in marketing for a work site healthcare management company downtown, just 5 minutes from the dental school. There has been a definite learning curve with this job since I've never worked in healthcare before, but it has been really good for me. We leave an hour earlier on Monday mornings so Michael can listen to an oral surgery meeting, so I go on a solo breakfast date. I kind of love that tiny window of time before my week starts...it slows me down and gives me a minute to think and read. One of my favorite places to go to lunch downtown is the Indianapolis City Market, just a few blocks south of my work. Markets are the best part of any city, in my opinion. I love being so close to Indy's...and its Blue Bell ice cream milkshakes. :)

When we're not at work and school, we love exploring this new city of ours. Downtown Indianapolis is really transforming into something great, and there are some beautiful spots and fun events around. The pictures above are from last Thursday's concert on the canal that we just went to, after taking advantage of a free museum day. We love free...blame dental school. And we love that Indianapolis is the "crossroads of America"... there are so many cities nearby that need to be explored! We've made quick trips to Louisville, Cincinnati, Des Moines, Chicago, & Milwaukee, and we still have a long to do list.

But sometimes we don't explore, because staying home is so fun, too. We are surrounded by good friends here. GREAT friends here. Just in the town homes around us are about 15 other young families that go to our same church, and we all have so much fun together. Most of us are far away from our families, so we lean on each other for help and for fun. I absolutely love my friends here, and their kiddos. Mostly their kiddos. Just kidding. But seriously, their kids are really cute.

You can frequently find Michael checking on his plants, and me checking with my sister to see if my outfit is ok. I think drill team in high school has given me a permanent crutch for needing opinions - I got ready for high school every day with all my friends in the locker room after practice. You can't just get ready all alone after that. Sisters are such good sports.

We have some fun neighbors around here who just love when we play outside with them. From the second we pull up into our parking spots, there are little boys who rush over asking "Michael, football?" And inside, our little apartment is finally feeling pretty homey. It took about a year of project lists and Craigslist searching and whatnot...but we are feeling pretty settled now. Making a little home is a good, good feeling.

Our random sources of income really crack me up. I choose traditional full-time employment, but Michael has very different ideas to work with his student life. He has a profile online with a dog sitting company, so we have some random visitors here and there. Truth is, we'd probably babysit cute dogs for free, but we're more than happy to get paid for it, too.

Michael is also an avid mystery shopper...meaning that almost every time we go out to eat it's either free or we even make money off of it, because we fill out surveys afterward. It's a sweet gig, and it lets us try a bunch of places we would otherwise never be able to afford right now. If we're not mystery shopping, we probably have a Groupon. Gotta love the student life.

And a few times a month Michael talks me into transcribing one of his dental school classes (they pay students to transcribe every class so that everyone has the lectures to study from word for word), which is always an experience... Last time I transcribed an hour lecture about something called "Hairy Tongue" and I squinted the whole time so I didn't have to look at the PowerPoint pictures. Those harsh conditions usually lead to me justifying clothing purchases with verbatim money because...those are just not fun.

And besides all of those things that keep us busy, there always seems to still be fun moments full of just nothing, really. That's when Michael plays a little guitar or takes a lesson from YouTube. He would play name that tune with me as long as I would let him. Or we just stare at our hummingbird feeder until we get little visitors. I once heard that Hawaiians will ask their children "have you seen a bird today?" if they feel like they're moving too fast or getting too busy. I like that little check. We're definitely ok there. 

I think having a little cat around encourages some slow down moments as well. She is just tempting us with naps all the time... we love her. And we don't love cats. Just this one. She's part of this little routine we have going on now too.

So that's our Indiana life. We have been here one year this month, and it FLEW by. I'm positive the next three will fly by, too. Life just picks up speed, right? I'm grateful that I have a life that I want to slow down.