Scheu Family Blog

2024 is picking right up where 2023 left off, speeding by in the blink of eye and a whole lot of precipitation. I would’ve thought things would start slowing down a little after Christmas, but honestly it feels like it has only sped up. I think that with all the time I took off during Q4 of last year, I had some catching up to do at the first of this month. After starting the year way above normal, temperature-wise, it gradually got colder and colder each week. It would eventually become sub-zero and we would finally get some snow accumulation. I think we got about 3”, causing me to shovel the walk and drive for the first time this season. We enjoyed seeing the kids a few times, especially when we hosted our first Family Dinner Sunday – something Ann wants to do once a month in 2024 – having all the children and their significant others over for a nice, sit-down, family-style dinner. The first dinner? …a favorite of the kids…cheesy chicken & broccoli rice – yum! Supposedly, we were in a slight drought coming into the month…well, I can tell you that we are not any longer after it rained for a nearly two weeks. There’s now mud everywhere in our backyard, on our pups’ paws and on our floors! Although the Cowboys were eliminated from the playoffs (after winning the NFC East conference) again, the Boilers remained at #2 in the nation all month with the reigning National PotY dominating Big Ten play. We enjoyed having the kids over each weekend as well as babysitting our sweet little Tillie whenever Abby & Seth needed a little break. The days are getting longer each week, but we still love seeing the sky at sunrise and sunset during our drives to/from work. We have a ton of pictures to share again this week – mostly Christmas-related – so let’s get on with it. Hello again; it’s been a while since we last touched base, so sit back and welcome to the latest entry of the Scheu Family Blog.

Maddy & Taylor were busy with work again this month as they continued to build a life together up in Carmel. Mads continued to work mostly from home, doing underwriting magic as well as coaching the Zionsville West middle school wrestling team – which is a true passion. Ann & I enjoyed watching the Z-West team, at home on the big screen – as they are streaming home meets on YouTube again this year. Lola enjoyed seeing Maddy come home for the family dinner nearly as much as we did, I think! Mads & Tay enjoyed a long weekend away at the end of the month, going to an area of the country I’ve not been to yet – the far northwest, in Seattle. We can’t wait to hear the stories and see all the pictures! Here are pictures of Abby performing with the Pirateers for the first time in five years!

Abby still loves working at Sly Fox up in Greenwood but doesn’t love the drive. Thankfully, despite some maintenance this month, she still loves her new Honda Civic and it treated her well this month. She stayed with Seth all month again as they continued to build their budding relationship. We love that they live in town so that we get to see them a couple times each week – including Tilly. That dog is so good when she’s over here. She loves to run and play with Delilah out back – no matter what the weather is like. We have an ongoing euchre battle. For the month, the kids are slight up, 5 games to 4…but it’s a long year… Seth continues to attend school and has enjoyed his switch to day shift. The kids are taking Tilly to some sort of training class, though it’s still too early to tell if it will help her. I think much of her behavior in general is just caused by her being a puppy who isn’t even 6 months old yet. If anything, she will learn more about how to act (calmly) from our older dogs – which means that Abby needs to bring her over more often. She continued to also help coach the Pirateers dance squad with her old friend (and dance mentor), Kuyhlia. One night, the card game ran a little late and the kids wound up staying the night – it was just like old times! Here are pictures from Christmas.

Luke continued to discover life, balancing time between work (Mesco, S&D and vetting other professional options that have presented themselves over the past month), family, and his gal Samantha. They are such a cute couple. I give Luke credit, he’s much more romantic than I ever was at his age. They’re around the house a lot, which we love. Luke rearranged his room again, creating a work area and a nice space for his tool kits. He landed another big job just this past week. The only problem? His storage choices. We didn’t sign up to have machines, tools and supplies stored in the den, LOL. No, honestly, it’s fun watching him figure shit out. Here are a ton of random pictures from our recent adventures.

Ann & I are really starting to enjoy this new normal. We have begun to truly cherish watching all three of the kids grow and learn about life. They’re all such different people; it’s pretty cool, actually. Being a behavioral guy (went to school for it, worked in it for nearly 35 years now…), that’s the stuff that I find fascinating. And now we’ve moved to the stage where we can sit back and just let life happen to the kids and enjoy talking to each other about our observations… I guess that’s what old folks do?? 😊 Ann’s office continues to grow and become busier and busier. She has enjoyed spending time with friends, scrapbooking, seeing family and another birthday. We ended up going to Nashville on her special day, where we had dinner and a movie. We were going to go to Big Woods / Hard Truth but wound up at a smaller venue called the Chop House. It didn’t look like much, being located on the 2nd floor of an old hotel – but boy was their food delicious! We had filets, baked potatoes and some amazing baguettes with hot garlic butter dipping sauce…yum. We topped it off with some cheesecake…since it was her birthday. I mean, she had to have cake on her bday, right? It turns out that the band we came to see (Ace Frehley) was also eating dinner from there as well – though they got theirs to go… It was our first time seeing a show at the new Brown Co Music Center. It’s small but really nice – not a bad seat in the house. I think it holds a couple thousand, so it’s quite an intimate setting for a concert. The opening act was a band from New York, called Kore Rozzik. They were not good. The singer’s voice was shot and he just tried too hard with his schtick. The guitarists were good but the sound was muddled with the guitars buried in the mix. I kind of felt bad for them because everyone stayed in their seats during their set. But man, when Ace Frehley hit the stage, it was loud as hell! I think they basically propped old Ace up for the first few numbers. He eventually came out of whatever haze he was in and ripped off a killer, five-minute guitar solo with his legendary smoking guitar. The following day, we met up over at Gma & Gigi’s house to continue celebrating Ann’s birthday. Gigi’s Gourmet was open, which was fabulous as always but really we all came for the homemade camel cake – yum! It was a great way to wind down the month. A month that saw me able to get out only once or twice each week. Work was extremely busy, as is normal at the start of each calendar year. I enjoyed my Thursdays, playing disc golf with Dennis after work and then spending time with Bryan and the guys playing poker afterward. Out of a total of 8 rounds, 6 were at the Airpark, 2 at Donner and 0 at Greensburg & Batesville combined. I’ll have to work on that in February… We have a ton of social media pictures to share this time.

Next up is our Waybac segment, which continues to feature old pictures from our old digital camera in August of 2002. The first batch is a sweet photo session with Kevin, downtown on the square with just the two oldest kids. Those are followed by a batch of pictures of Matt attending soccer camp at Washington Field with a group of kids from overseas.

And finally, we wrap up this month’s blog entry with our video segment which features one new home movie as well as several from around the internet.

And that does it for this month’s episode of the Scheu Family Blog. Thanks for keeping up with us this time out and we’ll catch up with you again next time. Until then, have a good one and stay safe out there. We miss ya, Mom.
Later, Scheu