Botanical Gardens Trip

This isn’t actually a weekend thing, but Heather and I were apart most of the weekend, so you will have to settle for our little Tuesday night outing instead. πŸ™‚

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My parents very thoughtfully gave us a membership to the Omaha Botanical gardens, a place Heather and I went several times while we were dating / engaged. We had been planning on going sooner, but it seemed like we couldn’t get any free time to match up with when the garden is open.

Tuesday night happens to be one of only two nights a week they stay open late (We just found out today that they stay open late Monday night as well, I had thought it was only one night a week)

Heather and I took a little trip down to the gardens, and enjoyed a beautiful walk through the closer half of the grounds. We just didn’t have time to do the whole place before close, stopping for a quick picnic used up too much time beforehand. I really like going there though, there were only a few other people around, and the setting is really peaceful. It would be more peaceful if it was an extra mile from I-80, but even with some noise it’s a relaxing place.

I don’t know if I have mentioned the train set there, its hands down the most impressive train setup I have ever seen. The model rails run through models of most of the landmark buildings in Omaha. Each model is made, as far as I can tell, completely from wood, seeds, nuts, and leaves, all glued together to form the buildings. Apparently whoever it is that does those has branched out, and we discovered an addition, beyond the train area, made up of famous buildings from around the world.

I don’t think I can tell you how cool it was, but I posted a few pictures.

Hopefully Heather and I can make quite a few return trips, we never regret going!

-Jordan

Unit Cost Breakdown

Heather and I were trying to decide how economical the cooking we did on Sunday was. Fortunately I hadn’t thrown out the receipts yet, so I did a little spreadsheet work.

Let me explain a few details here, some things I had to estimate the price of, because we didn’t use the entire package. The “Mexican Blend Cheese” comes to mind, although I think there were some others. Some things, like the fresh parsley, I just counted the entire cost, because we didn’t save the rest. There is also a question of how much the seasonings for some of these items cost, but I didn’t think that was worth the effort to try and figure out.

(Editors note, I just let Excel generate these tables, and they are really ugly, probably shouldn’t look at the source on this one)

Chicken and
Potatoes
Item: Price:
Boneless Chicken Breast $17.40
B Size Red Potato $3.96
Total Price: $21.36
Servings: 10
Unit Price $2.14

Enchiladas:
Item Price
Whole Grain Total Shells $3.19
Ground Beef $2.05
Cream of Chicken Soup $0.88
Enchilada Sauce $1.20
Mexican Blend Cheese $1.84
Refried Beans $1.32
Total $10.48
Servings: 7
Unit Price $1.50

Lasagna
Item: Price:
Ground Beef $2.05
Ricotta Cheese $2.35
Sliced Mozzarella $4.72
Red Sauce $3.46
Egg $0.08
Parsley $0.99
Noodles $1.75
Parmesan cheese $2.00
Total: $17.40
Servings 12
Unit Price $1.45

The conclusion is, not too shocking, but we do in fact save quite a bit eating stuff we pre-made. The challenge is having enough variety that we don’t feel like we are eating the same thing every day for two weeks πŸ™‚

-Jordan

Bikes And Food!

I think this blog may be more of a weekend thing for a while, as very little post-worthy happens during the week it seems. On that note, this weekend was rather full:

  • Hit the Old Market farmers market
  • Finally managed to see the Con Agra park in the daylight
  • Bought Bikes
  • Rode ~10 miles on the local trails
  • Cooked something like 44 servings of food
  • baby sat for Heather’s cousin

In the expanded view:

The farmers market, every Saturday for the rest of the summer in Omaha’s old market area, was surprisingly active. I was expecting a bit of a slow start considering there aren’t many vegetables ready to eat yet. As it turns out, there were a lot of people selling green onions, green garlic, asparagus, and hothouse tomatoes. Also there were fresh bread and summer sausage type vendors as well. they easily managed to 100% fill the little quarter-block area setup for the market. Heather and I purchased a few things, most notably some amazing multi grain bread. After some time gawking at the different things in the market, we headed a few blocks over to the park.

ConAgra park was beautiful! Heather and I have had the pleasure of walking through the part of the park that is always open during the twilight / dark part of the evening, but never before have we been there during the day. The fountian isn’t quite as amazing in the daylight, lacking its colored lighting effects, but the park itself is really pleasant. The half of the walkway that is on the ConAgra campus was open, so we got to see that area for the first time as well. We spent quite a while setting on a bench beside the lake, watching the fountain and enjoying a beautiful morning.

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Once we left the park we headed back to the apartment for a quick lunch, and then headed out to Bike Masters, a bike shop recommended by my uncle Bill. They were really helpful, and had Heather and I both riding around the parking lot trying out a few different bikes. Sadly I was so occupied trying out the bikes I forgot to get any pictures, but you will just have to take my word for it. We had a lot of fun with that, and finally settled on a bike that each of us liked. Or rather we each found one that we were happy with, we didn’t get matching bikes. I then discovered that my Escape is kind of small inside, and ended up having to make two trips to haul the bikes home, but the shop was only a few minutes away from our apartment.

After hauling the bikes home, and changing into somewhat more appropriate clothing, we headed out to give our new bikes a try! The “Big Papio Trail” runs within a few blocks of our apartment, so we headed to intersect it. Riding on the trail was wonderful, we rode for miles without even noticing the distance we covered. I checked a map later, and we went out about five miles before we stopped in a little park near Center street. The ride back was slightly uphill, and into a slight breeze, making it somewhat more noticeable. It wasn’t painful though, our pace just wasn’t quite as fast.

Sunday, after church, Bethany came over for lunch. I grilled chicken, and we sort of broiled some sliced red potatoes. Counting what we ate at lunch, and what we froze there were ten servings of that meal. We did a large portion by choice just to replenish our stock of quick lunch items. We have been meaning to do a better job of pre-planning the weeks food, and actually got to it this time. Heather and I made up a shopping list, hit the store, and then proceeded to make a pan of enchiladas, a pan of lasagna (we didn’t bake that until Monday) and a big pot of vegetable soup. Needless to say our freezer is very full right now, but we have a variety of lunch options ready to just grab and go for a few weeks.

Baby sitting was interesting, in part because it came at the end of a rather long weekend, and in part because our charge can now walk. He’s still not what you would consider confident on his legs, but being able to pick what part of the house to be in certainly changed how he interacts with the baby sitters. By 8:30pm we had him all changed and put to bed, by 9:00 pm Heather was out cold on the couch. I put a major dent in my book before we were relieved, and I guess did a good job of keeping an eye on the house while everyone else slept? πŸ™‚

I don’t know if we can fill every weekend quite this full, but I think we did a pretty solid job this time around!

-Jordan

It Was A Good Run

… But I guess it couldn’t last forever.

Gas was over $2.00 at the stations across the street from work today.Β  I just looked up the archive, It dropped below $2.00 on November 4th.

That means basically six months of really cheap gas. I suppose this is another sign of summer, gas prices climbing again.

Heather and I wen’t to a baseball game not so long ago, but I messed up and wiped the pictures off the camera before I downloaded them, and somehow I can’t bring myself to post about the day without any pictures to post 😦

-Jordan

Yet Another Video Link

I feel bad posing another random video, but there hasn’t been much going on as of late.

anyway, the video: Crazy things done on a bike.

Also,Β  I have been thinking of cataloging books here, it might be interesting to look back on. so I will give it a shot here I guess:

Finished this month:Β  “Dauntless” (the lost fleet, book 1) and “Zoe’s Tail

Started: “Atlas Shrugged

I am strongly tempted to try and post mini reviews of each finished book, but I think I will skip that for now. I should say that I rather liked Dauntless, and am really looking forward to working my way through the rest of the books in the story sometime soon.

-Jordan

Up Up And Away!

Heather and I will be Heading to Florida for Chrissie’s wedding. The same Chrissie who was in our wedding, and now in a nice turnabout, Heather gets to be in her wedding. I will be mostly trying to avoid getting sunburned.

I feel bad saying this, but I am hoping this weekend isn’t another of the hit and miss amazingly nice spring weekends Omaha has been seeing. That would be such a waste πŸ™‚

-Jordan

Wrapped Up Another Month

Heather and I just finished our first full month using our budgeting system. I won’t go into detail, except to say it was fairly painless. I don’t know how much of our success was due to our really being on the same page, or due to the fact that very little happened last month to complicate things.

We are loosely following Dave Ramsey’s system. I never would have guessed being married to a business major with some accounting classes under her belt, that I would be the one to get to do all the detail work of getting the budget together and keeping track of receipts. Somehow that’s how things worked out though. I shouldn’t complain though, Heather has been really supportive, and I am happy with the system I worked out.

As I mentioned a few days back, we finished paying off my Escape. Our next goal is to build up a substantial “emergency fund.” We are using <online bank’s name censored> for an online savings account, it’s not quite by the FPU book, but I had an account with them already, and they sync really well with the existing <bank name censored> accounts I have. Back when I opened my account the interest rate was incredible too… It’s not quite as good now, but still considerably better than just a normal savings account.

-Jordan

** note: my editorial review board felt naming the banks posed a security threat, so the post has been edited accordingly.

A Milestone Of Sorts

Not too much to post about today, but I wanted to observe that, according to site-meter, there have been over 1000 visitors to heatherandjordan.com!

given the number of ways browsers can be hidden from sitemeeter, its not a hugely meaningful number, but interesting none the less.

also, Heather and I got the picture DVDs burned over the weekend. Now we just have to figure out a way to mail them safely. I also uploaded the entire CD worth of pictures to the website, but as I feared the order is a colossal mess, and we are still trying to decide what to do. Plan A would be to re-order the pictures in the gallery, plan B is to cull the album down to a handful of our favorites so they aren’t so painful to sort.

I will keep you posted πŸ™‚

-Jordan

Finished A Few Things!

Ok, so its going to be a short list… But I am still excited about it.

Over the weekend, Heather got the finishing touches on the picture CD that has been in production for months now! We still have to burn copies, but having the pictures all together, edited and in order is a huge step. I hope to upload them to this website soon, but may end up settling for a Picasa web album as I know Gallery is going to mess up the order of the pictures. I don’t really relish the thought of fixing the order one-by-one in their clunky web interface when thereΒ  are over 500 pictures in the album.

The second item is my car loan! Its an amazing feeling to be done paying that off. Heather and I were planning to aggressively work on that loan, as per the Dave Ramsey school of thought, but we were afraid it would take much longer to actually knock anything out. We are very grateful for the generous gifts people gave us for the wedding, allowing us to get a huge head start on that.

-Jordan