Staying Busy Before Christmas

Posted on by Jordan

It’s probably a bad sign that every time I sit down to write a post now, I have to fight hard against the urge to spend a paragraph explaining why I am so late in getting the post up…

Anyway, remember that pile of butter from before?

We baked it into hundreds of cookies, and then invited friends over to help decorate!

The event quickly demonstrated we could probably use more variety in Christmas themed cookie cutters, and decorating widgets. On the other hand, Christmas cookie accessories more or less match the “only get used once a year” type of thing I have been known to complain about storing (and moving). I could probably make an exception for things cookie related however.

I did make it clear that there were lots of cookies right?

Everyone took home a heaping plate, and we still had enough left over to represent the Nelsons in two cookie exchanges!

The following weekend, Heather and I made a quick trip down to the KC area for a wedding shower. It was a nice shower, and I wound up having some really interesting conversations with a number of the guests. All the same, if you are planning a shower don’t worry about hurting my feelings if you made it girls only. I am perfectly content to entertain myself 🙂

Because we were going to be in the area Sunday, we headed over to Liberty MO. to meet up with some friends and attend their church. In a rare turn of events, we were running way ahead of schedule when we parked the car in Liberty. I had seen a few of these on the way in:

It was a beautiful old neighborhood, so Heather and I both were eager to walk around and explore… if perhaps for different reasons. You will have to indulge a small tangent here so I can comment on the fact that it was a beautiful day, worth noting mostly because I don’t know how many weekends in December lend themselves to walking around outside for fun.

Back to the mysterious silhouette! A few blocks down the road we found a former presidential mansion!

It may be impossible to see in the small picture there, but the plaque explains that this was once the home of Harry S Truman. A few blocks farther and we were in the historic square and downtown area. It would be difficult not to notice the signs of decline creeping into the area, but it was clear that large amounts of energy have been expended to make the square inviting to walk around in. They have historical site markers and plaques explaining the significance of the area at a density unrivaled by any town square we have ever toured.

Near the far end of the square we finally encountered the man himself:

Then it was back across the square, back to the church, and then back to Des Moines!

-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

Skating And Cookies

Posted on by Jordan

It looks like I am just going to have to accept that winter is here.

This past weekend was full of winter activities, starting here:

Look at all those people lined up! You would almost think we started going to trendy places in town or something…

Well, no actually those are all middle school students and you just can’t see the line of min-vans dropping them off. The question remains, what could everyone be lined up to do?

Ice skate:

The rink wasn’t overly large, but it was outside, and downtown making for a fairly cool atmosphere. An atmosphere lessened by the surprisingly young clientele combined with the unrelenting inappropriate “dance” songs being played by the helpful live DJ.  (Then again maybe I am just getting old /sigh )

Heather and I went out to the skate rink with a few of her friends from work. Our little group had a great time, despite the unexpected atmosphere.

Note that we captured the entire city skyline in that picture 🙂

The next morning, we pulled together some cookie recipes and got the ingredients just in time for a friend of Heather’s to come over and bake with her. Six hours later, they had enough cookies to pass out to our entire building, and then some:

That night, we went out for dinner and wrapped up the night driving around some of the Des Moines hot spots for Christmas lights. I worry that we may be peaking early, but I am starting to feel ready for Christmas.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights all included knocking on doors here at our building to hand out plates of cookies. We tried a similar thing a few years ago, and didn’t meet with much success. I am happy to report that this year nearly everyone we tried was home, and we met some great neighbors!

-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

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 🙂

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

Brrrrr

Posted on by Jordan

Walking outside I start to think winter might be getting here soon. I am really not ready for that yet 😦

we might make it to November without snow, but its getting a lot colder all of a sudden.

Heather returned from her loooong trip to KC last night. She brought back all kinds of exciting things! Such as an example of our completed wedding invitations, and a really cool Nebraska Football themed quilt her mom made for me, given as a birthday present. I might get a picture of the quilt up at some point. The invitations you will just have to hope to be on the list to get one in the mail 🙂

I tried a recipe I found for some low-sugar peanut butter cookies yesterday afternoon. Had the dough all ready when Heather came back, and we tried a few fresh out of the oven. Sadly no pictures, but I trust you can all imagine a peanut butter cookie. The verdict? Splenda sweetened baking still tastes a little different than “normal” cookies, but they were really quite good.

-Jordan