October Catch-Up

Posted on by Jordan

Have I mentioned how nice it is to have a reduced commute? 🙂

I wanted to take a minute and summarize some of the noteworthy things that happened during the blur that was our last weeks living in Atlantic.

First up: Leaves fell off the trees. While this was expected, Heather and I were living in a house in Atlantic, and they expected us to deal with them.

Leaves

That picture actually shows the full extent of our progress. We managed to get the leaves into big piles, before realizing we didn’t have bags. We picked up bags, but not until the end of the weekend, forgetting that we were never actually in Atlantic while the sun was up during the week.

Luckily, the mowing crew, or our landlady or somebody bagged the leaves for us. I feel pretty bad that we didn’t get it done ourselves, but we were pretty much using all our available energy on other things at that point.

The second noteworthy event happened over the weekend of the first. Heather and I went to Omaha. We left early enough to attend church, and got to see a lot of our friends while we were there. After lunch we stopped for a few minutes at the botanical gardens. I should note that the weather was amazing! Heather and I were both dressed for fall, and got rather warm considering the temperature nearly topped 70.

LG_Fall

After a few minutes enjoying the weather and the colors, we headed to the main event: a Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance that Heather had arranged for us to attend as a birthday present. I don’t have any pictures from the show, and really… No picture would really do it justice. The first half of the show was telling a Christmas story, and while good, not jaw droopingly amazing. The second half contained and abundance of ten-foot jets of flame and fog machines. I cannot begin to tell you how fun it was.

-Jordan

Catching Up!

Posted on by Jordan

Hi there, it still seems to be summer and I just don’t know where my time is going!

I have been meaning to post a quick summary of what Heather and I have been up to, and the longer I put it off the larger the summary needs to be.

First off, Heather and I volunteered to help with an MS support bike-ride. We thought it was going to involved more interaction with people actually riding bikes, but somehow we wound up wrangling chairs and counting votes for “best water stop.” It was a fun way to spend a few hours!

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I don’t have a picture for it, sadly, but Heather and I ran / walked in the Blair 5k run / walk. It was an interesting experience, as Heather and I do not actually run or walk at the same speed. I promised to stay with Heather the entire time, and to maintain a good attitude about the whole thing. I had a little trouble at the start when people were racing away, and I felt like if I *could* keep up with them then I should be, but in the end I am glad we kept the pace the way it was. We had a nice morning, and did something new!

Most recently, we went to a College World Series game. Heather’s vacation allotment has finally rolled over to a new year, so we have some time to work with again! We both took a Monday afternoon off, met for lunch then headed to the botanical gardens for a few hours. The weather was perfect, we dodged the hot humid conditions that have landed in Omaha by just a few days! After spending a really relaxing time wandering the mostly empty gardens we drove a few blocks, found a place to park and walked over to Rosenblatt Stadium. The turnout for the game was overwhelming. We felt a little silly, because we really didn’t even know who was playing, or for that matter care too much. Once we finally got inside, we found that they let in a lot more people than they have general admission seats for popular games. Lucky for us we found a place to sit before seats ran out.

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Somewhere in the middle of all that, we found time to head to Kansas City for part of a weekend,  crash a graduation party, and keep our apartment somewhat clean! 🙂

-Jordan

Botanical Gardens Trip

Posted on by Jordan

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. 🙂

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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

Weekend Decompression

Posted on by Jordan

Quite a bit happened over the weekend, so I am going to probably spread that over a few days worth of posts rather than do one huge post.

The primary thing that happened is that my parents and brother came to town! Everyone (Mom, Dad, Bethany, Andrew, and Heather) met up at my apartment around nine Saturday morning. We decided to visit the Omaha botanical gardens as our first action of the day.

I was a little concerned about what there would be to see in the fall, but it turns out that it wasn’t an issue. the majority of the “areas” in the gardens looked amazing. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the truly awesome model train network they have built into a hill midway through our walk. I might have a few pictures of that, but haven’t had a chance to check my camera to see if anything is really worth showing.

I have been to the gardens in Omaha three times now, and every time came away thinking it was really pretty cool. Heather and I are thinking about getting a membership, because we have really enjoyed the trips we have taken together.

We then went to the other side of town for lunch at the Upstream where the rehearsal dinner will be held. It was nice to be able to show my parents the room we have reserved there, and we got to try the food! ( I have eaten there a few times before, but it was a first for a few in our group)

after lunch, Bethany headed back to Lincoln for pre-game festivities, my parents headed back to their hotel for a nap, and Heather, Andrew and myself grabbed my Wii from my apartment and headed over to Heather’s apartment. Heather she needed a nap too, so Andrew and I got some Wii bowling in while everyone slept.

After the naps, my parents came over to Heather’s apartment, and we just hung out for an hour or two, before heading out again to play some mini-golf. Mini-golf with Andrew is always fun! Ironically this was also the first golf related outing Heather and I have been on. I guess all we can say is that the summer has gotten away from us… and fall is slipping fast. I won’t inflict you with a play-by-play of the golf game, sufficient to say nobody did all that well, everyone had fun, and it used up the remaining day.

( other things, like a football game might have happened, but that will remain forever a repressed memory 😉 )

-Jordan