Topic-O-Rama

Posted on by Jordan

And now, a handful of news I have been meaning to post.

First up, the week before thanksgiving, Heather and I went to Kansas City. The event was a birthday party for her grandma’s 85th birthday. The majority of Heather’s extended family was there, and we had a really good time. We also witnessed one of the best “we are going to have a baby” announcements ever. Heather’s cousin played a video, featuring his son singing happy birthday to Gigi, and then ended it with “and what are you going to be?” …. “a DINOSAUR!” “no, what are you going to be?” “A big brother!” and at that point the room went wild. I suppose it didn’t hurt that there were so many friends and family members packed into the room, but it really seemed like a great way to break that news.

Heather and I may have to wait a year or two, just so we can come up with a creative way to announce something like that… I mean the bar is pretty high at this point 🙂

Then of course there was Thanksgiving. Strangely, Heather and I did not even pack our camera… so I don’t have any pictures to post. The traditional meal and family time was spent with Heather’s family in Blair. We really enjoyed it! After dinner though, is when things got more interesting, somehow the women came up with a few copies of the sale fliers from all the stores doing Black Friday deals. The living room was total chaos as they passed around adds and debated plans for the big day. Next thing I know, it’s 2:30AM and I am sleepily saying goodbye and goodluck to my wife as she slips out of bed to trek to the mall. They got eight hours of shopping in before even stopping for breakfast!

While they were shopping, I went with Heather’s dad to the Nebraska game in Lincoln. We left at a much more reasonable hour than the shopping crew had, but still got to Lincoln with plenty of time to do a little tailgating before needing to find our seats. Being at the game was really enjoyable. It wasn’t a nail-biting game like the Nebraska vs. Iowa State game that Jim and I had gone to earlier in the year, but I can live with a less-exciting win!

I forget exactly where this falls in the chronology, but at some point Heather and I attended a “lighting of the Christmas tree” event at the mall next door. (For those of you who haven’t been to our hose… we really are next-door to a mall). I was a little skeptical of the event, but they had a live band and free cookies, so we decided to check it out anyway. Maybe you wouldn’t have been surprised at the number of people there, I know I was… At any rate they easily had a few thousand people all standing outside around the little courtyard lake area listening to the band and waiting for the lights. It was cold, but not unbearable, all the same I was happy when Santa finally arrived with his wand to light the tree. You didn’t know Santa had a wand did you? Apparently when Santa lights a tree with his wand, there are fireworks involved! I am a little sad to say the mall Christmas  tree lighting fireworks are going to go down as the best firework show I got to see in 2010. I am happy to say I really enjoyed them!

Speaking of Christmas events, Heather and I attended the Waukee Iowa Christmas festival. Waukee is just outside of Des Moines, and actually closer to us than downtown. We again got a free cookie, and got to watch ice sculpting. Probably the most enjoyable part of that little trip was meeting up whit a few friends from Church. It was wonderful to feel like we actually know people here in town. Some days it doesn’t feel like we have made much progress in that department.

The last, and most recent event I should record before bringing this to a close is photography related. Heather and I just returned from taking family pictures for another of Heather’s coworkers. We learned quite a lot on that trip. A good thing for sure, as Heather books these things to give us chances to practice. One thing we learned is that, although we got a beautiful sunny afternoon, 25 degrees with a 15mph wind is too cold to do outdoor pictures! We also learned that although our camera has a tiny integrated flash, it really can’t do indoor photography. Despite the challenges we encountered, Heather has some rather impressive results! As I write this she is behind me wrapping up the sorting and editing process. It appears we will need to buy an external flash if we want to do more pictures indoors.

And finally, a bonus future event! We are going to a Court of Honor for my Scout Troop! It will be the first event Heather has attended related to scouts in Des Moines, and the first Court of Honor I have been to. I don’t think it is going to be significant enough to justify its’ own blog post, but we will get to see the boys get recognition for merit badges and rank advancement.

I am still hoping that December is less exciting going forward 🙂

-Jordan

The Cornhuskers Host Idaho State (And I Was There)

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t know how much there is to say about it, other than I wanted to mark the event with a blog post.

Josh contacted me, saying he was going to be in Lincoln, and that he would probably be able to obtain tickets outside of the student section for a reasonable price.

Corey was also able to come, making it a college reunion of sorts.

(I typically don’t post peoples names in blog posts, but considering they were both in the wedding, their names are already thoroughly posted in other areas)

I think having gone to the ISU game really made the atmosphere in Lincoln feel fresh and exciting.

It’s also worth noting that, while I am proud of the (before the 2010 season) 305 game sellout record, being able to just buy tickets to a football game is somewhat novel. I guess you can’t have a tradition bordering on the fanatical, and have tickets available to the casual fan for very long.

That being said, if you have extra tickets the Texas game… 🙂

-Jordan

Labor Day Weekend

Posted on by Jordan

What are we doing this weekend?

Are we driving half way across the US for a wedding? Are we attending showers or parties? Are we going on a trip somewhere?

NO!!!!

We are staying home! We are not doing anything really, just sitting around the apartment and enjoying spending some time with each other.

That doesn’t make for much of a post though. Luckily we had a busy week, so I will tell you a little about that. 🙂

Thursday night was the Iowa State University football team’s season opener. Heather had a work event including a tailgate and tickets for the game. Ames is only a short drive from Des Moines, so we headed up right after work Thursday night. We got there just in time to eat a quick sandwich and walk into the game.

As with many teams, ISU did not pick a challenging team for their season opener. It made for a game that wasn’t terribly interesting. It all felt kind of odd, I was surrounded by loyal fans, and I don’t feel any real antagonism towards the Cyclones, but I didn’t really feel much emotion about the game ether. In the end (or perhaps at halftime when we left…) I think it was fun, and I am really glad we went.

Heather and I realized it was our first college football game that wasn’t the Huskers or the Mavericks, and that alone made it kind of novel. Parking was a bit of a problem. Most of the campus was under water just a few weeks ago, meaning many of the grass areas people would normally park were too soft to use. Or at least I hope that is the reason parking was so bad, we wound up parking about a mile away on some random side street.

On the way out, we saw an…. enthusiastic and perhaps geeky fan:

I started laughing, and stopped to take a picture.

It is at this point I discovered something somewhat sad about my wife.

…

She had no idea what that guy was dressed up as. I made sounds of outrage and left her guessing for a few minutes, but it became clear she wasn’t going to all of a sudden remember.

At the time of taking the picture, I had been planning on asking Heather if she thought he was in the 501st. I figured I would have to explain that group, but I thought it would be an interesting topic… I mean we had a rather long walk ahead of us.

I love my wife, but it is clear I have not fully converted her to a sci-fi fan yet. On the bride side, she did like Battlestar! 🙂

-Jordan

P.S. I came *this close* to blurring the faces in that picture of us in the ISU stadium, but I thought that might be taking it a little far. All the same I do feel more than a little conflicted living in Iowa this time of year.

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

Kansas City

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I went to Kansas City over the weekend, to calibrate her dad’s birthday.

As with every trip we have taken to KC, it really felt like we didn’t have nearly enough time, but it was still a lot of fun. I will skip the play-by-play, but I can tell you that we watched a lot of football, and had a lot of really good food.

Some of the football was live, when we attended the Cheifs game on sunday. It was my first pro-football game, and a really fun expereince, even if our team lost.

-Jordan