October 2009

It has been a long road, but the much anticipated return of Bob Carroll to Rowin Road has arrived! Dad went home this past Saturday and is doing OK. He was greeted all weekend with several visitors and Beth coming back to Indy from Nashville. I haven’t talked with him much one-on-one since he has been home, but I’m sure he is glad to be onto this next phase of his recovery. Over the next few weeks, Mom will be off from work and he will have some home health physical and occupational therapy come to the house to work on different things. With Mom’s help and some gradual improvements each week, we hope to continue moving forward with the goal of him being independent at home so Mom can go back to work. Dad has been very strong for the last 2+ months and his attitude has been pretty positive. We are proud of him and happy he is back at home.
Earlier in the month, we had a Homecoming party here at the condo for all the Purdue friends and kids. Brad was in town from San Francisco and Jeremy came down from Chicago. It was a great day (except for the Purdue loss to Northwestern) and fun to have such a crowd at the condo. We started early and ended up out in Broad Ripple as we normally do with that crowd to only come home and crash. We had our Carroll Camping trip again this year. We had a cozy cabin about 45 minutes away from Indy. We all enjoyed ourselves and even though the weather didn’t cooperate as well as it has in the past few years, we enjoyed the time together. The weather in Indiana is so random that it is really hard to plan camping trips, but we will continue to try. We enjoyed a little fishing and I caught a fish so big that we couldn’t get it on camera…OK, I caught a fish the size of my finger and it fell off the hook before we could take a picture!

We were fortunate enough to be invited to a wedding the following weekend for Beth’s good friend Mo Butz. I’ve known Mo for awhile and was good friends with her older sister in college. It was a great time and an opportunity for me to share my awesome dance moves with Claire and get my usual wedding karaoke version of “Shout!” taken care of. One of the highlights of the wedding was this photo-booth where you can go and get your picture taken as your wedding favor. Deb and I visited it twice and had a good time. Also, in our desire to always be part of the limo festivities, Pete and I took stole some beers before they took off after the wedding!

We were off to another wedding the following weekend in Atlanta for Debbie’s cousin Jim Carter. Deb left on a Thursday and met up with her parents in Atlanta. They spent Friday going to Turner Field and taking a tour of CNN with her Aunt Barbs and Uncle Ralph. I met up with them that evening at the rehearsal dinner and enjoyed some late night drinks in Chuck and Heather’s room. The wedding was beautiful and the weather cooperated so it could be outdoors. The reception was great and we all went out to a group dinner that evening. It was great to see some of Deb’s family that we haven’t seen in several years. The following day we were off to see a tour of Coca-Cola. The highlight of that was Deb getting scared by the holiday polar bear and tasting all the different types of drinks Coke offers. We took a nice walk through downtown and enjoyed the Centennial Olympic Park. We ended the day in typical Cyphers fashion…watching football and having a nice beer before catching our flights!

Halloween was pretty calm this year. I went dressed as Peyton Manning from the Sprint commercial a few years ago. Deb was a Colts super fan (it was a last minute ditch effort at a costume). We went to the annual end of the season party for flag football and partied with our usual crowd. Saturday was filled with a nice relaxing day on the couch watching college football followed by a night next to the fire pit at the Bassett’s.