Nurse Hannah

Posted on by Jordan

Heather caught some sort of nasty 24 hour stomach bug that really knocked her down Sunday. While that’s no fun, it’s not really a newsworthy event when you are interacting with toddlers on a daily basis.

What was newsworthy, or at least qualifies as “something I hope to remember” was how Hannah responded.

Once she realized mommy wasn’t feeling good, Hannah would not leave her side. Heather curled up on the couch to watch a Christmas movie, and Hannah crawled up into the blankets with her, and quietly watched an entire move next to mom! I don’t know if I can properly express how unusual that is. Normally if the TV is showing *anything* that isn’t Elmo (including non Elmo-centric content on the Elmo show) Hannah will reliably throw a fit. She also appeared to be unable to sit still on the couch with us for more than two minutes; judging from prior experience.

It was a very Sweet scene in our house, that I would have loved to take pictures of, but given that this all started when Heather started feeling awful, I don’t imagine it would be popular had I taken a picture of the two of them and posted it online. Just imagine those two cuddled up on the couch under a blanket 🙂

 

When not nursing her mommy back to health, Hannah commandeered an old purse as hers. You might wonder what an almost two-year-old would keep in a purse? Every Christmas tree ornament she can reach of course! She hasn’t protested much when we re-decorate the tree, but she also hasn’t been afraid to restock her purse when we aren’t looking. Every day brings new stuff I guess.

 

-Jordan

 

Preparations

Posted on by Jordan

Hi there!

Instead of posting over the past few days I have found myself working a lot more than expected, and in my free time slowly using up the contents of this picture:

(not pictured, 15 cups of flour large quantities of sugar)

You may be thinking “…but Heather and Jordan are always eating healthy things, and Heather doesn’t even eat sweets”

Right you are my friend! But what you haven’t considered is how much we wanted to create some Christmas traditions for ourselves. The plan is to finish baking several hundred cookies and then invite friends over to help decorate them. Hopefully sending the majority of the finished cookies home with the decorators. (Otherwise I am going have no choice but to eat them, thus feeling sick from too many cookies every day for weeks)

🙂

-Jordan

And We Are Back!

Posted on by Jordan

Hey there!

Heather and I survived the Christmas build-up, Christmas travel, and even the post-Christmas blah that seems to hit once you get back to your apartment after seeing all your family.

Of course, all that happened over a week ago… It seems my posting has been delayed. I think I have been feeling overwhelmed by the idea of trying to recap the holidays in a way that somehow does justice to them, and also isn’t too boring to read.

After procrastinating this task for some time now, I realized it would be best to just put out this token post and then get back to whatever I felt like writing. Feeling obligated to post doesn’t do much for my frequency of posts.

So Christmas was fun! Heather and I spent the time with my family, getting to see quite a few members of the extended family on both my mom and dad’s side.

I want to say a lot more about how much we enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone, and what we did, but this will have to suffice rather than writing up a 5000 word post.

-Jordan

Cleaning (Not Quite Spring?)

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I had planned to head over to Blair for a Gutschow pre-Christmas event. However our nephew picked up something novel at daycare and decided to share it with the family as a sort of holiday treat. Heather and I were sad to learn that the event was canceled. Then again, given the “up all night puking” stories we were hearing, we thought that a phone call was probably as close as we wanted to be associated with the majority of that group for a while.

We did manage a few Christmas themed events over the course of the weekend, despite the abrupt change in plans. First off we attended a performance of “A Christmas Carol” Friday night. The venue was probably the smallest possible for a semi-pro group to use, but it was a fun event to be at. The audience was seated on three sides of the “stage”.   The stage consisted of the open floor between the chars, and some backdrops on the fourth and final wall. I will say again that it was a really enjoyable show, although the venue probably should have a large sign reading “HIPSTERS WELCOME.” I didn’t quite feel cool enough to be there… but I guess it was fine.

So that was Friday night, Saturday started kind of early as we had planned to help clean the church before heading to Blair. We found out Saturday morning that Blair was off, but still had to meet our cleaning crew bright and early so we headed over. All that cleaning was just a warm-up though as it turned out. When we got home Heather was feeling inspired to really attack the apartment.

She also claims my (purely innocent) pointing out that the show “Horders” was on Netlflix streaming guilt-tripped her into the cleaning spirit. I suppose that may have a little validity, as I may have started an episode playing for her at one point a few weeks back. Whatever the reason, after some generic cleaning Heather dove into sorting through her clothes.

As anyone who was gracious enough to help us move (in ether of the two moves) may remember, there were a lot of boxes marked “Heather’s clothes”. The allocation of closet space here in Des Moines has, at times, been a point of contention as I suppose would be expected.

The process took quite a few hours, and I often heard things like “I didn’t even know I had this!” or (while holding up something I could charitably describe as scanty) “Could you ever imagine me wearing this?” In the end, I have to say, Heather was willing to hold a hard line and parted with quite a few things:

Yes, you are seeing that correctly… FIVE bags of clothes waiting to head out the door. To be fair, my clothes make up some of that total. All the same, there was a lot more there than I ever expected to see go out the door! Strangely enough, our closets in no way seem empty at this point… I guess everything just has room to breathe now. 🙂

-Jordan

Getting Ready For Christmas

Posted on by Jordan

Featured in this picture:

  • A few of the cookies we made
  • Our little tree
  • Heather’s newly shortened hair

Well… what to say about the past week.

Starting back on the first noteworthy thing, Wednesday we made Tuna Casserole for the kids at church. The first kid in line took one look at the pan, scrunched up his face like he was about to cry his eyes out, and nearly shouted “Tuna? But I don’t want to eat tuna!” Let me tell you, it didn’t make the chef feel real great about the meal. On the whole though, the kids managed to put away nearly all the food we prepared.

Friday we had our first Christmas event, my work team arranged to meet for dinner after work. It was fun to introduce Heather to so many of the people I work with, and to meet their spouses and significant others. I hate to stereotype, but many of the software developers are firmly on the introvert side of the fence. The majority of their wives and girlfriends are extroverted. It makes for an interesting time when you get that group together. I think Heather had about 15 conversations and I said about that many sentences, but everybody had fun!

Saturday, we had planned to run a few errands, and then have friends over for dinner and decorating Christmas cookies. The weather had other plans. Those plans not only included the first snow of the year, but an 18 hour blizzard warning from the national weather service.

When it was all said and done, I think we only got four to five inches of snow, but the wind made them into a major problem! That wend by the way, produced windchill down to a breath-taking negative 22! Our friends decided not to risk the cold, and we ended up staying home and not even making the cookies. The errands did get run though, including Heather getting eight inches trimmed from her hair!

Sunday, we tried several times at church to recruit people to help with the cookies, but the December “way too much going on” bug has already arrived, and nobody had the afternoon free! Heather and I ended up doing the cookies by ourselves, but we had quite a bit of fun doing it!

I looked at the calendar for the next two weeks and… well I won’t be bored. Hope everyone else is staying warm and not too crazy busy yet! 🙂

-Jordan

Coffee!

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I are just winding down our first weekend in Des Moines for 2010.

One of the great things I got for Christmas was a coffee maker! Somehow A year ago this time, I didn’t really drink coffee. This meant that we didn’t put a coffee maker on our registry or buy it when we were equipping our new household. I don’t really know how I made the transition, but at this point it seems like I have always liked coffee. This has been a slight problem on weekends, because I really missed having it to start my day off with. Needless to say, I was excited to get the chance to try out making a pot of my own this weekend.

…

Heather always makes fun of my taking pictures for the blog, and just now I realize I didn’t get a picture of that momentous occasion. I guess you will have to use your imagination.

Anyway, the coffee was great, and I think adds a lot to a relaxing Saturday morning.

I did however find that I may be making it all wrong

I just don’t see it being worth all the work those guys go to for a *small* cup of coffee.

-Jordan

Merry Christmas!

Posted on by Jordan

HerbieTree

Heather and I have a (short) tradition of getting a new ornament every year. Herbie got the honors this year… Heather sometimes talks like I am the only one who feels weird about being in Iowa, but I think we both have strong allegiances there. We have the same little tree from last year, it works really well in our space-limited apartment. We still don’t have many Christmas decorations, but the tree does a lot to make the apartment feel the holiday spirit.

Speaking of the holiday spirit, Heather and I have discovered that we listened to different Christmas music while doing traditional things like decorating the tree…. and I find that I don’t feel as into it without that. Heather’s tradition is to watch “White Christmas” during/after the tree decorating. I know my family always listened to the same albums of Christmas music… I just don’t know what those albums were called. Heather has actually accused me of being “a scrooge” but I just don’t care for some of the more…. artistic interpretations of traditional Christmas songs.

Along with tree decorating, Heather spearheaded baking some Christmas treats. More than spearheaded, I didn’t even help. Not to say I wasn’t willing, but we have found that only one person should work in our galley kitchen at a time. It only takes a few times bumping into the other person when you are trying to quick get something done to think it isn’t fun anymore. After making some amazing cookies, Heather broke them up into a bunch of gift plates:

HeatherCookies

We then worked our way around the building giving them away to any of our neighbors who happened to be home. It was a fun thing to do, and I am really glad she took the initiative to do it. I think about half our neighbors weren’t sure what to think, but it’s hard to complain about a plate of cookies!

I know this is a few days early, but we are looking to slip out of Des Moines before another wave of ice and snow shuts the city down, so I probably won’t get the chance to post closer to the actual day…. Merry Christmas!!!

-Jordan

p.s. I don’t think I ever mentioned before, the ornament from last year was a sand timer… we only had a month until the wedding at Christmas 🙂

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 Four

Posted on by Jordan

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.

-Jordan

Christmas Day Three

Posted on by Jordan

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:

img_0795

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!

-Jordan