The Wall, We Have Hit It.

Posted on by Jordan

Actually… it isn’t that bad, after a ‘down’ weekend Heather and I are starting to feel like attacking the unfinished tasks again.

Let me catch you up on the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago, we were living in an apartment, and Saturday morning, the view was this:

As some short update posts already gave away, we had plenty of help and got things moved fairly quickly. What took more effort was unpacking and finding a home for everything that was in a box. We powered through that as fast as we could so that our house would be ready for company. Quite a bit of company as it turns out.

On the following Thursday, my grandparents stopped through on their way out to a wedding. That was the first night that we hadn’t both worked until midnight on something, but we still managed to sneak in a few minutes putting our house together. On Friday, Heather’s parents came into town, and they brought our favorite(only) nephew Holden.

He got the deluxe tour:

We took Holden and his grandparents down to the farmers market, and then later he did some fabric shopping with Heather and Pam. We quickly discovered that although the main area in our house was mostly put together, it wasn’t what you would call kid-proof. He kept us on our toes.

That crew headed home Saturday evening, leaving Heather and I a few hours to pull a few things together and grab some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, my parents, sister and brother came into town, just in time for church. We had some really ambitious plans to take them out to see the bike bridge I did a post on a while back. The triple digit heat index, combined with the fact that they had spent a considerable amount of time walking the previous day at the Omaha zoo put a pretty solid kabosh on that idea.

It turned out that a nap and breaking out our new copy of Ticket To Ride was about the perfect use for the Sunday afternoon. I can’t remember if I mentioned Ticket to ride when recapping our visit to DJ’s house out in Colorado, but it has quickly become Heather’s favorite game.

On Monday, Heather and I both worked, leaving the rest of my family free to head down to Pella for some touristing. They came back with some amazing pastries so I have to assume the trip was a wild success. That evening, Heather and I met up with them and headed just outside of Des Moines to where an annual balloon festival is held.

The weather was not ideal for hot air balloons, and we didn’t get to see the kind of numbers featured in the postcards I have seen of the event. That being said, it was really cool. I really don’t understand how they pilot the balloons, except to say they appeared to have more control than I would have expected.

After the balloons, we stopped and got pizza. This is noteworthy only because the local Cub Scout pack was busing tables as a fundraiser. It wasn’t the best table service we have ever had, but it was some of the best mealtime entertainment we have had… perhaps ever.

My family headed home the next day, leaving Heather and I finally home with no impending dates on the calendar. We haven’t been as productive this week as the past few. Today we finally got back into painting and may have a dresser ready to instal soon.

In hindsight, I don’t know if we would have really planned the past few weeks differently, as there were events outside our control driving each visit. All the same, I know we would have been better hosts had there been a few weeks between each event listed above.

On the other hand, we have proven that we can comfortably host three to four guests, and are always happy to have people visit!

… Just give us a week to wrap up this furniture painting 🙂

-Jordan

A Weekend In Des Moines

Posted on by Jordan

As I think I mentioned before, this weekend was notable in that Heather and I didn’t have any plans for it.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think we were bored though!

Saturday was spent mostly cleaning… but after being on the go for so long the place really needed it.

I should back up though, Friday night we walked over to eat dinner and go to a movie at the mall we live next to. It only took us a year to actually get around to doing that! Heather and I often walk around the outside mall in the evenings when we want to go for a walk, and frequently we comment that we should take advantage of our location to walk to dinner and a movie, but ether we have been busy, or there haven’t been movies we wanted to see, or other things just kind of got in the way. Not anymore though! We finally walked over to a movie.

Ok then, back to Saturday… We had a wonderfully lazy morning, then cleaned like mad, then had a chance to go over to a friends house and meet a friend of theirs who is starting a mission of sorts in Mexico. It was neat to hear them talk about what they have seen in Mexico, and what they hope to be able to do there. It was also nice to just be together with friends from church in that kind of “around the kitchen table” setting and just enjoy being together.

While talking that night we found out about an annual event in Des Moines, called the “World Food Festival.” We were excited to learn that it was an all-weekend event, so decided to swing through after church Sunday.

As you can kind of see, it was a little crowded there, but there was no shortage of food to be had. Apparently we should have been writing down what we tried, because I can’t remember anymore… It seemed so obvious at the time, hmm…

Heather had some chicken fried rice, and a spring roll, I had a gyro, and then we sampled some Ethiopian rice dish, and some vaguely South-American vegetable pastry:

The pictures are from my phone, as somehow despite our intentions of learning more about photography, we managed to forget to bring a camera with us today. As you can start to see from the view behind me in the first picture, there were some interesting things we could have taken, if only we had planned ahead a little better. I suppose this let us enjoy the food more, although frankly the authentic spring roll, and the rice dish weren’t big hits with us.

I suppose it’s cheating to throw up this post with a few hours left in the day but I can all but assure we won’t be doing anything else blog-worthy today 🙂

-Jordan

P.S I just realized I haven’t ever put up a post about the Farmer’s Market here in Des Moines… despite having pictures and even some video from when my parents came to visit. I guess I should keep that in my idea list… In the meantime this festival isn’t at the same site, and was perhaps a quarter of the size of the farmers market, just to give prospective against something that I haven’t ever talked about directly.

About That Bike Ride

Posted on by Jordan

Well…

We did make it back, but there were consequences:

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

A Wedding, Fireworks, And Demolition

Posted on by Jordan

It has been a while hasn’t it?

What have Heather and I been up to?

Well, we went to her cousin Kiley’s wedding. Perhaps most notable in the fact that it will probably be the last wedding ever to hold it’s reception at Dana College. The news of the college going into bankruptcy came out a few day before the wedding, but somehow arrangements were made to allow the reception to proceed as planned.

Outside of that excitement, it was really nice wedding… I just don’t feel like I know what to say about it. Heather has a big family, and the majority of them came for the wedding. I got to meet a few family members for the first time while I was there! I am beginning to realize that easily my favorite aspect of weddings is the opportunity to interact with the other guests. Everyone has such tight schedules that chances to see some friends or family may only come up at major events like weddings. Not to discount seeing the bride and groom, but if my wedding is anything to go by, so much gets packed into those few hours, it’s all a blur. A warm fuzzy blur, but still a blur.

After the wedding, and after staying up far too late talking to family at the farm in Blair, Heather and I drove to Kearney to see my side of the family. Quite a few of my cousins were there, and they all brought fireworks! To be honest I was a little disappointed that things worked out this year such that Heather and I were unable to attend a professional fireworks show. I am not sure getting to supervise a handful of my younger cousins as they set off an arsenal of patriotic spirit is a full consolation, but it’s something. We have managed a perfect safety record so far, although towards the end of the “show” a lot of effort was put into trying to simultaneously launch two and three things at once. I was sure  that would eventually lead to problems, but we ran out of fireworks before we ran out of luck I guess. 🙂

Moving on to this weekend (still in progress) Heather and I finished work Friday without any special plans for the evening. We had attempted to set something up with a few couples from church, but no concrete plans ever finalized. When we got home, Heather had an e-mail from another couple we know through church, inviting us to come help them demo the house they just bought. Maybe your thinking, “hey, that doesn’t sound like a great way to spend a Friday night” well, maybe you don’t live in an apartment and type on a computer for a living? I am not sure I would want to do that every night, but I truly enjoyed getting to swing a hammer for a few hours! Beyond that factor, it is just nice to feel like we have some friends we can hang out with here in town.

Looking to the future, Heather and I plan to ride our bikes all the way down town this morning to visit the farmers market. It will easily be our longest ride this summer, although not long by most bike enthusiasts standards I suppose. We have discovered that Des Moines seems to have spent a significant amount developing an impressive trail network throughout the metro area, but they have not spent much putting together an online map for said trails. A few low-res .gif files are they best they have to offer, and what they have are years out of date. The adventure may end up being if we can find the trail everyone tells us we should have seen on our last ride.

-Jordan

Bikes And Food!

Posted on by Jordan

I think this blog may be more of a weekend thing for a while, as very little post-worthy happens during the week it seems. On that note, this weekend was rather full:

  • Hit the Old Market farmers market
  • Finally managed to see the Con Agra park in the daylight
  • Bought Bikes
  • Rode ~10 miles on the local trails
  • Cooked something like 44 servings of food
  • baby sat for Heather’s cousin

In the expanded view:

The farmers market, every Saturday for the rest of the summer in Omaha’s old market area, was surprisingly active. I was expecting a bit of a slow start considering there aren’t many vegetables ready to eat yet. As it turns out, there were a lot of people selling green onions, green garlic, asparagus, and hothouse tomatoes. Also there were fresh bread and summer sausage type vendors as well. they easily managed to 100% fill the little quarter-block area setup for the market. Heather and I purchased a few things, most notably some amazing multi grain bread. After some time gawking at the different things in the market, we headed a few blocks over to the park.

ConAgra park was beautiful! Heather and I have had the pleasure of walking through the part of the park that is always open during the twilight / dark part of the evening, but never before have we been there during the day. The fountian isn’t quite as amazing in the daylight, lacking its colored lighting effects, but the park itself is really pleasant. The half of the walkway that is on the ConAgra campus was open, so we got to see that area for the first time as well. We spent quite a while setting on a bench beside the lake, watching the fountain and enjoying a beautiful morning.

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Once we left the park we headed back to the apartment for a quick lunch, and then headed out to Bike Masters, a bike shop recommended by my uncle Bill. They were really helpful, and had Heather and I both riding around the parking lot trying out a few different bikes. Sadly I was so occupied trying out the bikes I forgot to get any pictures, but you will just have to take my word for it. We had a lot of fun with that, and finally settled on a bike that each of us liked. Or rather we each found one that we were happy with, we didn’t get matching bikes. I then discovered that my Escape is kind of small inside, and ended up having to make two trips to haul the bikes home, but the shop was only a few minutes away from our apartment.

After hauling the bikes home, and changing into somewhat more appropriate clothing, we headed out to give our new bikes a try! The “Big Papio Trail” runs within a few blocks of our apartment, so we headed to intersect it. Riding on the trail was wonderful, we rode for miles without even noticing the distance we covered. I checked a map later, and we went out about five miles before we stopped in a little park near Center street. The ride back was slightly uphill, and into a slight breeze, making it somewhat more noticeable. It wasn’t painful though, our pace just wasn’t quite as fast.

Sunday, after church, Bethany came over for lunch. I grilled chicken, and we sort of broiled some sliced red potatoes. Counting what we ate at lunch, and what we froze there were ten servings of that meal. We did a large portion by choice just to replenish our stock of quick lunch items. We have been meaning to do a better job of pre-planning the weeks food, and actually got to it this time. Heather and I made up a shopping list, hit the store, and then proceeded to make a pan of enchiladas, a pan of lasagna (we didn’t bake that until Monday) and a big pot of vegetable soup. Needless to say our freezer is very full right now, but we have a variety of lunch options ready to just grab and go for a few weeks.

Baby sitting was interesting, in part because it came at the end of a rather long weekend, and in part because our charge can now walk. He’s still not what you would consider confident on his legs, but being able to pick what part of the house to be in certainly changed how he interacts with the baby sitters. By 8:30pm we had him all changed and put to bed, by 9:00 pm Heather was out cold on the couch. I put a major dent in my book before we were relieved, and I guess did a good job of keeping an eye on the house while everyone else slept? 🙂

I don’t know if we can fill every weekend quite this full, but I think we did a pretty solid job this time around!

-Jordan