Florida

Posted on by Jordan

img_1137

Over a week later, and I still haven’t managed to get a good post up on this trip 😦

Well, here is a quick summary:   (if you consider 1000+ words quick)

Wednesday night:

We left Omaha kind of late, didn’t get to Kansas City until 11:30 or so. Found out we needed to be at the airport by 6:00am the next morning.

Thursday:

Got up way too early, Heather’s dad drove us to the airport. Found out AirTran charges $15 for the first checked bag, checked one large bag, headed for the security checkpoint. KC airport was doing their inaugural run of the new luggage scanner, stood in line for a long time. Our flight stayed at the gate an extra 15 minutes so everyone could make it through the security checkpoint. Landed in Atlanta, practically ran to the gate for our connection. We made it there just in time to have them call general boarding. Landed in Orlando,  finally stepped outside and remembered what hot and humid feels like. Got a rental car, found out Budget Rent-a-car has run out of Florida maps. The guy at the counter sketches a rough map to our destination on the back of our reservation paper. We then drove about an hour and a half out to Palm Coast. We found out on the way that we were running late, so I dropped Heather off at the nail place, for the bridesmaids nail appointment, and then headed to the hotel. I checked in, hauled our bags up to the room and then passed out on the bed. Heather called a few hours later to tell me the guys were going out, and if I wanted to go with them I should get up and moving. The guys (including me) went to a Mexican place on the coast, and then hung out at a bar for a while. It was a fairly entertaining night, despite not really knowing anyone there. Heather was out with the Bridesmaids, I can’t remember what she said they did, but she really liked the other bridesmaids and assorted friends who were there.

Friday:

Heather and I slept in as much as we could, grabbed some breakfast at the hotel, and then I dropped her off for a wedding event nearby. A luncheon of some sort, I can’t speak for what Heather was doing during the day. I drove to the beach, and read until I started worrying about getting sunburned. Leaving the beach, I drove along the coastal highway for a little while, just enjoying the view, then started looking for someplace to have lunch. It was a rather late lunch, but my perspective on time was pretty much out the window at this point in the trip anyway. After lunch I headed back to the hotel, napped, and read until Heather got back. We got cleaned up and headed to the rehearsal.

The wedding location was beautiful. I spent some time just enjoying looking around the area, and then looking for interesting pictures to take of the rehearsal. It was the first rehearsal I have been to where I didn’t have a role of some sort in the wedding. Rehearsals are less interesting to watch than to be in. I probably could have been more aggressive taking pictures, but there was a professional on hand, and I didn’t want to get in the way. The dinner that followed was really nice, but for the sake of brevity, I wont give you the play-by-play.

Saturday:

Heather and I got up early and drove out to the beach. We were able to spend about an hour walking along the beach. It was easily my favorite hour of the entire weekend. Heather wouldn’t allow any pictures, something about having rolled out of bed and gone straight to the beach. You will just have to take my word for it that she was beautiful, and the beach was amazing in the early morning. We then headed back to the hotel, where Heather was soon picked up by the bridal party on their way to the salon to get hair done. This left me with something like seven hours to kill, so I headed back to the beach, dressed to swim. I soon discovered that the water was really cold, and that swimming by yourself is kind of boring. The waves were kind of rough, so I don’t know that Heather would have been up for swimming, even if it hadn’t been so cold. I then headed back into town to find some lunch, and a new book, having finished both of the books I brought with me.

I spent the afternoon sleeping, and reading, then headed over to the wedding. Conditions for the wedding were perfect. A very light breeze was blowing, and the temperature was something like 75 degrees. It may have been a little warm for the guys in the tuxes, but from where I was setting it couldn’t have been better. I won’t go into detail of the wedding, Heather keeps telling me I describe things in odd ways, but the short version is that it was beautiful.

After the wedding, we danced a little, walked down by the beach, and realized what time we would have to get up to make our flight the next day. All of those things were memorable, two of them because they were fun. By the time we got back to the hotel and into bed it was midnight, setting us up perfectly for the next day!

Sunday:

We started the day at 4:20 (EST), and managed to be packed and on the road by shortly after 5. An hour and a half later we managed to find our way into the car return area of the Orlando airport, despite their “signage so bad you would think its personal” policy with respect to rental returns. We stood in a number of lines eventually making it to our flight just as they called for boarding, leaving just enough time to hit the bathrooms before piling onto the plane. It is at this point that I started reading “Dauntless” its 304 pages long. By the time we landed (the captain said something about a headwind slowing us down) I was 3/4 of the way through the book. We landed in Kansas City, and Heather’s mom picked us up. We napped for an hour or so, and then went to lunch. After lunch we loaded up and drove to Omaha. I didn’t feel like I could sleep until I unwound some, so I ended up finishing the book, bringing my grand total to 3 for the weekend…

Speaking of books, this post got really really long, sorry. It should have been a multi-post thing, but here it is.

-Jordan

Up Up And Away!

Posted on by Jordan

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 🙂

-Jordan

The Honeymoon Day Two (Counting Backwards)

Posted on by Jordan

The second to last day we were in Colorado, was our most ambitious day. We planned to ski and go on a sleigh ride.

Our gracious hosts at the bed and breakfast had recommended we try a nearby mountain that was considerably smaller than Winter Park. That sounded like excellent advice, given Heather only had one other trip under her belt and I was planning on trying skis instead of a snowboard.

Let me just say that was some great advice! The ski area “Solvista” only had 3 lifts, small to say the least! It was perfect for our needs though. We got equipment and lift tickets, and headed out to conquer the mountain. The thing I hate about skiing, is that one of the hardest elements happens at the start: getting off the lift. I managed to wobble my way away from the dismount point, and Heather almost pulled it off too.

Neither Heather nor I were feeling too confident for the first run down, so we took our time. I was very glad to have taken skis as they are just so much more maneuverable at low speeds. After two trips down the mountain, we were ready for a break, and it was lunch time. I should again mention how awesome the smaller ski area on a week day was. Our car was parked less than 100 feet from the front door of the main lodge.

After lunch we made one more trip down together, stopping to document our “who can look like the biggest dork” contest:

img_0896

Heather thought she had a solid lead, but ultimately couldn’t compete with:

img_0902

We had a lot of fun skiing together, but by this time Heather was ready to call it a day. I took a few more quick trips down the mountain, just to see how well I could really do on skis. I still prefer a snow-board, but I found I was comfortable on about the same blue runs in skis as I would have been on a board.

We had just enough time to make it back to our cabin, clean up, and head back out to where the sleigh ride started. The sun had just set when we left the cabin, and it was fully dark by the time we made it to the ranch. The temp readout in our car said -6f. Every other night we were in Colorado the temperature was in the high teens when we went out at night. Suffice to say, the hour-long sleigh ride was perhaps the coldest experience of our lives.

It was also amazing! The sleigh was fully loaded with twelve people, everyone wrapped up with lap blankets, and move slowly through the forest near the ranch. The trees had a perfect coating of snow and, the stars and the moon were beautifully clear through the openings in the trees.

img_0911

(note the frozen faces in that picture… we were so cold)

After the sleigh ride, there was a dinner in the somewhat rustic mess-hall. It probably would have been really nice, if the temperature were 20 degrees warmer. The room simply did not have sufficient heaters for the cold conditions. Dinner isn’t quite as relaxing when you eat it while wearing your winter coat and hat. It may not have been a romantic candle lit dinner, but I think it may have created more memories for us to look back on later 🙂

-Jordan

The Homecoming

Posted on by Jordan

For no real reason, I have decided to tell the story of our wedding in reverse order. I suppose this does increase the chances I will have a really really good picture of my beautiful bride by the time I want to talk about the wedding day, but that thought had not occurred to me until just now.

Wednesday of the week after our wedding, Heather and I started the day near Tabernash Colorado, in a really awesome little cabin. Packing up took a lot longer than I was expecting. Checkout was slated for 11-ish, and I figured we could beat 11 by at least 30 minutes. We ended up missing by about 30 minutes… welcome to married life I guess 🙂 Our hosts weren’t too worried about our checkout time so it really didn’t matter.

Our drive out of the mountains was somewhat complicated by wind. Wind shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but every night we had gotten one – two inches of powdery snow. The snow was blowing into near whiteout conditions on some of the early areas of the drive. Fortunately that didn’t last long, but the road was fairly slick for the first hour or so of our drive.

Once hitting Denver, we discovered the main route to the airport was closed for the day, but my awesome navigator wife managed to plot a new path to the airport using the dinky little map that came with our rental car. We made it to the airport without any trouble after that. Once in the airport, we managed to get moved up to a flight leaving five hours sooner than our original departure time. (we hadn’t planned on driving straight to the airport from the bed and breakfast, but were ready to come home by Wednesday) The change wasn’t free, but was well worth it.

I am not sure if its good or bad, but we made it back with time to tackle the mountain of gifts waiting for us in the apartment. This picture was taken after we were quite a ways into the process:

img_0933

( Sorry about the really small size of these pictures, wordpress is being a pain about squishing the aspect ratio of pictures unless I keep them smaller than the width of the text area. I could post thumbnails and link to images posted somewhere else on the site, but getting the posts up is enough of a project right now)

We had a pretty good system for the gifts, Heather logged items to a master spreadsheet:

img_0934

While I opened gifts:

img_0935

After a few hours, we had everything unwrapped, and some of it put away. Unfortunately we ran out of energy before dealing with the packaging:

img_0937

It was probably bad planning to pile it all in front of the door when we had to go to work in the morning. To be honest I don’t remember what we did… I guess we must have just dug a path and then carried it all down the next day.

-Jordan

Christmas Day Five

Posted on by Jordan

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.

-Jordan

Christmas, Day Two

Posted on by Jordan

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.

-Jordan

Our First Joint Christmas… Pt 1

Posted on by Jordan

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:

  1. I think “I don’t even need to look at the words for this one”
  2. Half way through Verse two I can’t remember any of the words
  3. 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.

-Jordan

Kansas City

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I went to Kansas City over the weekend, to calibrate her dad’s birthday.

As with every trip we have taken to KC, it really felt like we didn’t have nearly enough time, but it was still a lot of fun. I will skip the play-by-play, but I can tell you that we watched a lot of football, and had a lot of really good food.

Some of the football was live, when we attended the Cheifs game on sunday. It was my first pro-football game, and a really fun expereince, even if our team lost.

-Jordan

Nebraska City

Posted on by Jordan

Saturday Heather and I went to Nebraska city.The idea was to see an orchard / pumpkin patch or at least experience some authentic fall atmosphere.

Our first stop was at the Arbor Day Farm, which consists of a place to buy food (“pie garden”) a large apple sorting system, sales area for apples and apple-biased things, Nature  trails, and other Arbor Day related activities.

The apple-sorting and cider press (all somewhat historic I think) they had there were all dormant. I *think* they fire that all up during the “apple – jacks” days or whatever the festival is called. We decided to have lunch before checking out the rest of our options. Standing in line with twenty people in front of you all buying apple pie, with ice cream, or maybe just an apple slushy, made ordering a hamburger seem like a healthy choice. Eating them, they didn’t seem especially healthy, but they were pretty good burgers.

After lunch, we headed out on the nature trail they had, taking our time to enjoy thle amazingly beautiful day. The leaves were just starting to turn, so everything smelled like fall. The temperature was in the high 70s so we didnt really have a crisp day, but it made spending a long time outside really pleasant.

Before leaving we made a stop for some pie, because well, it was apple pie at the Arbor Day Farm. Pretty good pie, not as good as the pie Heather and I made, at least while it was fresh from the oven. Fresh from the oven pie is hard to beat though, so maybe that’s not a fair contest.

We left the “farm” and headed to an orchard. The orchard was running hay rack rides out from the parking lot though their pumpkin patch and actual orchard. We hopped on one of those, and had a nice, if somewhat slow ride out to see actual apples growing on trees. They also had a large vineyard, with grapes still on the vines. We had gone to the orchard with a vague plan to buy apples, but then realized we didn’t really need a huge bag of apples. In hindsight maybe we should have gotten a few just because, but we went home empty handed.

Heather and I really enjoyed the trip, and judging from the weather today, we may have caught one of the best possible days to make the trip!

-Jordan

Moab Day Three

Posted on by Jordan

Yesterdays Moab post got a little verbose, so I will try and keep this one short and to-the-point.

First off, where Heather was sleeping:

On the morning of day three, ( Sunday ) we basically just packed up camp and headed back to Grand Junction. The drive was pretty, although the scenery was pretty much the same as what we had been seeing all weekend. Back in Junction we had lunch and watched football until it was time for our flight. For the record I would rather not ever have to be that tired on an airplane again.

To recap, I really want to emphasize how much fun Heather and I had on this trip! It was so good to get to introduce the woman I am going to marry to some of my best friends. We also got to see some of the most amazing geological formations out there, in perfect weather conditions, under a relaxed time line that let us just enjoy everything we did. We really owe a lot to Josh for pushing to make this trip happen, and to DJ and Vanessa for being amazing hosts and guides!

One last shot of the guys, for good measure:

-Jordan