… Leaving only two weeks remaining until the wedding!
This weekend, Heather will attend the fourth and final shower before the wedding. Also this weekend its looking like we will get questionable weather, again. I still hold out hope that we are getting all this out of the way before the wedding, but bad weather keeps consistently hitting on weekends as of late, it seems.
Driving conditons permitting, I plan to stop buy the church to see how it has been decorated by some other even, as a hot tip said they did a really good job. Hopefully I can get a few ideas for Heather and I to use. Not to say we don’t have any, but seeing something tried is a lot better than guessing how things might look. Sadly the weather is going to prevent Heather from getting a chance to see it, but maybe I can take some pictures 🙂
The final day of our Christmas trip / vacation time was probably the least Christmas like for Heather and I, but still an enjoyable day.
It started out Tetris style, trying to pack everything we had accumulated up to that point into the Escape. Everything fit, but the entire cargo area, as well as the back seat were filled. Not filled to the roof, but the majority of the gifts we had been given did not lend themselves to stacking all that well. Throw in suitcases, and we barely had room for us to sit for the drive up to Curtis for church.
Church was somewhat entertaining as we got a mix of reactions, some people super excited to meet Heather, and other people not even knowing who we were. Its kind of easy to forget how long I have been away from Curtis sometimes, things like that will sort of remind you.
After church we headed out to the farm to eat. We had yet another really good meal, and again heavier food and larger portions than maybe Heather or I typically eat, but amazingly good. We also had time to sneak in quick naps before Heading into town for another shower.
The last shower of the loooong weekend was hosted by the mother of one of my groomsmen, Zach. Thanks to the Christmas holiday, Zach and his wife were able to be there, which was really nice. The rest of the attendees were people who were a big part of my life growing up, and I was really excited for Heather to finally meet them. It was a couples shower, I guess I should mention that… probably a good format for meeting 100% people I know and Heather doesn’t. I can’t say as I am really sold on going to showers, but getting to see everyone was pretty awesome. We also got some very thoughtful gifts, but by far the highlight was getting to spend a few minutes talking to various people that afternoon.
Somehow the shower ate up time a lot faster than we expected, and we missed our departure time goal by an hour or so, not leaving Curtis until close to 5:00. Adding that to one required stop in Kearney, and a rather long drive, made for kind of a rough end to the day. I shouldn’t say end to the day, the day ended with Heather and I making about six trips up three flights of stairs to get the escape fully unloaded. It left the apartment full of gift bags, ensuring that there would be something to do for the next two weeks :). I think the worst part is after all that, Heather still had to drive another 40 minutes to get home.
All in all it was a great trip, but definitely ended up being one of those where you wish you had more time to recover after you get done with the trip. I shouldn’t complain too much though, we got a nice break from work, and Heather and I have another planed break coming up in just a few more days.
Day four of Christmas with my family was our first down day. Probably a good thing, because Heather and I were both starting to feel a little over-stimulated.
It started out almost like a normal Saturday, with everyone sleeping in, and getting to lounge around in their PJs. The only difference was, Bethany, Heather, and I were in McCook, also that we did another round of gift opening late that morning.
The downside to it taking me so long to get through writing up the Christmas posts is that I can’t remember some of the details anymore, but I don’t think anything else of note happened that day. It was wonderful to just slow down for a while though! The days leading up to Christmas had been fairly hectic, and then the first few days of “vacation” were even more so. I really enjoyed everything we did this year, but having a day to rest was really nice.
Over the weekend, Heather discovered that the person who was set to arrange the flowers for the wedding isn’t going to be able to do them. The whole point of using silk flowers to begin with was to save money, and save headache because they would be done far in advance of the wedding.
Goal one remains intact, but goal two wasn’t going too well back in November when the flower lady said she didn’t want the flowers dropped off for her to work on until after the new year. Apparently she was low on storage and expecting to be busy with other things over Christmas. Sometime between then and now she apparently decided we had canceled with her, and moved on to other things. Unfortunately Heather didn’t discover this until Saturday.
On the bright side, she found out we needed a plan ‘B’ for flowers while she was in Kansas City, and while a number of her bridesmaids were in town. They put together a group of people with some experience doing flower arrangements and completely finished the flowers in one session Sunday! It created a frantic weekend for Heather in the midst of a shower, but in some ways its less stress than hoping the flowers would be done in time if we had gone with the lady that didn’t want to start until now.
My only wedding related progress was to book a hotel room for the two nights before the wedding. Heather seems to think she needs a place to stay before the wedding, and kicked me out for those days. It was kind of odd, I don’t think I had ever booked a room over the phone before. I am sure I could have figured out some way to do that online, but I wasn’t sure I would get linked with the wedding properly.
Sunday night, Heather returned from the KC shower/girlsNight/flowerArranging with her Civic packed to the gills with boxes. Again, I am overwhelmed by the generosity people have shown us, and amazed at the cool things we were given. I also don’t quite know how we are going to fit it all into the apartment, but Heather and I managed to find homes for nearly everything she brought back. We only had to stay up way later than ether of us wanted to, but at leas the “new stuff” factor provides enough excitement that it doesn’t feel too much like we are just forever putting dishes away. 🙂
Day three of our Christmas saga started off pseudo-relaxed, with no official events until 3:00pm that day.
However, Heather and some of the aunts decided to go check out the day after Christmas sales. For some reason this required leaving the house by 8:00am. For the first (and only) time in the trip I was somewhat glad Heather and I were not yet married and I slept through that departure, not waking up until 9:30 or so. Getting a shower still took a little bit of standing in line, but I was showered and ready for the day about the time the shoppers returned.
With everyone back at the house, it was time to start setting up for the shower that afternoon. A lot of cleaning and reorganizing went on. All the chairs and some of the tables from the basement had to come upstairs, Christmas deserts and food had to go out to the garage (nice and cold) and shower deserts had to come in, etc. Yet another reminder of why my family is great, everyone was ready to help and cheerful about getting everything ready. It somehow seemed wrong for Heather to be doing some of the setup work, but she jumped in and got involved with everyone else.
about the time the shower was going to start all the guys piled in a couple of vehicles and headed out to “the blind,” my grandfathers goose blind on the Platte River. We had a lot of fun shooting clay pigeons and playing in the snow. The actual trip out to the blind was done on this rig:
My “fearless” little brother also attacked the ice with vigor:
Back at the house, Heather was having a great time at the shower, or that’s what she told me later. I can’t really say much about the shower, except to say that it was really nice to see my family embrace Heather in that way. After the shower, I was pretty overwhelmed by peoples generosity! We received a lot of really neat, and thoughtful gifts! I started to worry about our chances of getting everything packed into my Escape for the drive home!
Once the guys got back to the house, it was time to clean up from the shower, move everything back down to the basement and get ready for another party! My grandpa’s birthday is the day after Christmas, and its part of the holiday tradition for us to celebrate it. Somehow he got stuck cooking for his own party, but it was again, a great time with great food.
after the party, we cleaned up again, and started packing for the drive to McCook to spend a few days with my parents. We quickly discovered we did not have room for both my brother and everything that we wanted to pack in our vehicle. I had already promised Andrew he could ride with us, so we had to offload some of our packing to my parents van.
Other than the drive home, I think that sums up another day!
Christmas day in Kearney started with roughly twenty people all digging into their stockings. It wasn’t as chaotic as it might sound, but still somewhat intense for the first thing out of bed.
Technically breakfast started before stockings I guess, and then continued after… I don’t know where to throw this in, so its going here…
Food over the entire trip was amazing. There were so many sweets around it was overwhelming, and they were all really good. Heather again earned my undying respect by resisting it all, and not even complaining about not being able to eat sweets during Christmas.
In the back ground of the morning was the challenge of cycling 20+ people through 2 showers and 3 bathrooms. Everyone gets along really well or I suppose things could get uncomfortable. Somehow everyone got ready in time, and by mid morning we were all assembled to start the formal process of opening gifts.
I don’t think too many families approach Christmas gift opening as a “one person at a time, one gift at a time” occasion, but its tradition, and I have to say I am fairly attached to all the Christmas traditions. We always open gifts in order of age, and this was the monument where it finally hit me that Heather is a little younger than my sister. The gift opening process took a while, but as always, was a lot of fun with everyone there. I somehow managed to surprise Heather by giving her an ice scraper, despite her having specifically asked me for it, and only it.
After we finished with gifts, we had the traditional Christmas dinner, fitting everyone into one big room downstairs. Throughout all of this it was really fun for me to see Heather get a chance to interact with my extended family. I really enjoy spending time with them, and wanted Heather to feel at home… I think that process started at least 🙂
After dinner we had a few hours of downtime (or maybe I am forgetting something already). Then it was off to the church to meet with the extended-extended family. My mom’s cousins etc, I don’t know what the proper term for them is. We had a few more hours to hang out and talk to people, then more food, then more gifts! Once we finished cleaning up the church, we headed back to the house.
I think we probably could have fit a little more into Christmas day, it didn’t seem that busy to me at the time, but writing it all down we did a lot. At any rate, that covers the high point of day two.
Heather and I did Christmas together this year. The first of what I expect will be every Christmas going forward together.
It started off kind of rushed as Heather had to work Christmas eve, managing to get off work around 2:00pm. I got off about noon, leaving me roughly two hours to finish my Christmas shopping. That part of my day was somewhat complicated by the fact that I forgot my wallet at home, so I couldn’t stop anywhere and grab something on the way home.
I managed to procure a fancy ice scraper for Heather and get it wrapped before she got home. Once she got to the apartment, we both had to hurry and get everything packed up and get out the door as we were hoping to make it in time to go to the Christmas eve church service with my grandparents. Somewhere in there, we decided to drive my Escape instead of the Civic, mostly because it would be better in bad weather conditions if we got surprised. Heather and pack differently, but we managed to get everything loaded and be on the road exactly when we had planned to, and without getting into a fight 🙂
Approximately three hours later we arrived in Kearney with just enough time to eat and change clothes before church. Somewhere along here is really the first time I think I internalized the fact that it really was Christmas eve. Once we got to Church I had the rather embarrassing realization that I really don’t know the standard Christmas carols all that well. In theory I know all the verses, but basically every one was the same process:
I think “I don’t even need to look at the words for this one”
Half way through Verse two I can’t remember any of the words
Verse three hits and I realize I didn’t even know it existed
Mix in the fact that I have a hard time reading a hymnal someone else is holding and you end up with kind of a jarring experience.
Excepting Musical follies, it was a really nice way to kick off Christmas, followed up with spending a little time with extended family before bed.
The Christmas time crunch has hit with full force, and I didn’t get a post up yesterday… Had plans of putting up a few today to make up for it, but its just not going to happen…
anyway, to get to the point of this: what Heather and I did over the weekend. Besides a few wedding related tasks, Heather and I did some Babysitting for her cousins.
It was remarkably easy, mostly because we were tasked with watching the most laid back child in the world. I can’t really think of too much to say about it really, other than it was something out of the ordinary for us to do.
Hopefully I will have time for some more verbose posts after the holidays 🙂
Omaha, got hit with an ice storm that slowly turned to snow last night.
By the time I got home from work, everything had a thin layer of ice on it, and the storm wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. It was really the kind of weather you stay at home and drink hot chocolate in. I didn’t have any hot chocolate though, so I went to the gym. Heather apparently also lacked hot beverages, and went to the gym in Blair. Getting home from the gym was a little exciting, but the advantage to driving when you shouldn’t is that there aren’t too many other cars on the road.
This morning, it only took roughly 25 minutes to get enough ice off my Escape to consider it drivable. I think it would have been a lot longer, but when the engine runs that long it gets warm and makes a big difference in how hard it is to get the ice chipped off the windshield. I don’t know how my car was in the perfect place to get this effect, but the caked icy snow stuff was over two inches thick over my windshield and hood. I have never seen anything like it. Luckily it was really brittle, so it broke up fairly quickly, but I was still left with a conventional layer of ice covering the entire vehicle after that.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… or I mean… In Blair, Heather was discovering her car wouldn’t traverse the farm roads at all. Local family members helped get her to work, but not until much later in the morning.
Hopefully we are getting all the nasty travel ending weather out of the way now… you only get one bad ice storm per winter right!? I can’t imagine another one come January, especially late January. 🙂
Last night, Heather and I went to visit some friends, and decorate cookies. Its possibly the first ‘second annual’ thing Heather and I have ever done together.
I don’t know the exact date, but mid December last year, Heather invited me to her apartment and we decorated cookies with her roommates. It seems so long ago, I can’t quite believe only a year ago Heather and I were just getting to know one another.
Getting back to more recent events, we had a really enjoyable time doing cookies! Its always a joy to interact with a couple who really love one another. I am withholding names because I don’t know that everyone wants their name plastered on our website… The downside to interacting with a happily married couple is that they cannot help but remind us of the fact that we are not yet married. I wouldn’t say we were jealous, but it certainly made it seem harder to send Heather packing off to Blair at the end of the night.
Also, it is a week until Christmas! I don’t quite know how that happened, but perhaps I have been fixated on another fast approaching date…. Whatever the case, I realize I have to find time to actually wrap the pile of gifts I have managed to acquire, and run down a few more things before Wednesday. (and not necessarily in that order!)
Nelsons 