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

Holiday Activities!

Posted on by Jordan

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!)

-Jordan

Christmas Themed Weekend

Posted on by Jordan

Ok, so mapping the theme to our entire weekend might be stretching it, but Heather and I went to a holiday themed show Saturday night.

We wanted to try and go to some sort of holiday production in Omaha, and settled on “A Christmas Carol.”

The Omaha Community Playhouse does “A Christmas Carol” every year, or has been doing it for years I should say. This selection worked well for us as we were trying to find something that avoided holiday parties etc, so being able to pick a date that was early in the month was ideal.

I am not really an expert on live performances, but in my opinion they did a really good job. I honestly wasn’t expecting them to sing, but the singing along with everything else was good enough you never stopped to question why they were doing it. Part of me really wants to know more about how they do the scenery work, there seem to have been some rather clever things going on as they moved set pieces in and out. I don’t suppose too many people express interest in that though.

I should mention that it was also the first time I had seen the story preformed by anything other than muppets. My memories of the muppet one are kind of hazy anyway, but I think I probably had an advantage going in with no idea what to expect. I was just able to watch it. I guess, I knew there were suppose to be 3 ghosts, and “Tiny Tim” plus a few other high points of the story in there somewhere.

In conclusion, if you were thinking about maybe going to see this show in Omaha sometime, I can recommend it! 🙂

-Jordan

Christmas Decorating

Posted on by Jordan

This post is a few days late in coming, but if you wondered what Heather and I did over the Thanksgiving holiday, the answer was “decorate for Christmas!”

(there is also the detail of Heather having to work Friday to earn an extra day off so we can actually go on a honeymoon, but we don’t talk about work here…)

On Thanksgiving day, we had a nice meal with just Heather’s parents and sister in Blair. Then that evening, more of the Gutschow family came out to the farm, and it was decided that the tree needed unpacked and setup. With a lot of people that job went remarkably fast. Without Gigi there, decorating kind of had to stop once the tree was out because nobody really knew where the rest of the decorations were, or how they should go if we found them.

Friday I was able to go to the Nebraska vs. Colorado game with Jim. The initial plan was for Heather to pick me up in Lincoln after the game, and we would proceed to Kearney to meet up with some of my family for some more Thanksgiving. Heather got off work earlier than expected, and I told her to just head out. My thinking was that the game would be mostly decided by the start of the fourth quarter. If you saw the game, you know that didn’t turn out to be the case… Anyway, I had a lot of fun at the game. I really love going to games at Memorial Stadium. I do feel pretty dumb for missing the end of that game, but hindsight is 20-20 I guess.

Saturday we helped unpack and assemble the Marlatt decorations, a rather large project. Fortunately there were a lot of cousins around to help out. The continued trend from Blair was that my grandparents weren’t home ether, leaving us to kind of guess sometimes on how decorations should go. I think we got most of it handled pretty well.

Sunday, after church we decided we hadn’t had enough decorating and headed to Target to get a few things for the apartment. They had a little three-foot tree and some properly sized decorations for fairly cheap, so now my(our) apartment has a little holiday feel to it. The only really sad thing about having decorations at my home is that Heather doesn’t live there yet. It makes things feel really “home-ish” but its still just me living there… I shouldn’t complain too much though, I get to see Heather quite a bit 🙂

-Jordan