Bowling In Nebraska

Posted on by Jordan

This kind of got lost in my campaign to redo the front page… lost but not forgotten about.

Heather and I traveled to Kearney Nebraska to watch my brother compete in a Special Olympics bowling event.

The trip started in Des Moines with a little rain. By the time we were 30 minutes down the road, it was snow, but the snow wasn’t sticking and the weather before we left indicated we should drive through it and be in the clear within another 30 minutes. What didn’t show up in the weather report I read, was the second wave of snow that caught us about 40 miles out of Omaha.

It made for easily the worst winter driving Heather and I have seen as a couple. Even with bad conditions, careful deliberate driving was working ok. What wasn’t working ok was the minority of drivers who were not content to stay in a line and use the narrow set of tire tracks that were open. Apparently getting where they were going 2 minutes faster was worth risking lives for.

Once we made it into Omaha, it really was smooth sailing, and we got all the way to Kearney without indecent.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast and headed over to the bowling alley. The most noteworthy thing we found as we came in was that they were not letting the public down onto the lane-level area at all, meaning the kind of wide hallway landing thing behind the lanes was really crowded. Lucky for us, my parent’s and aunt and uncle were already there, and had a spot staked out.

It was great to get to see my family, and it goes without saying I suppose, that Andrew was ecstatic to have us there for the event. After the hellos we found ourselves with plenty of time to chat as the event was a little lethargic getting started. Andrew headed up to his lane and everything looked all set, and then the PA system fired up and we discovered there were lots of announcements before we could get started.

After quite a bit of milling around, the bowling began. Andrew, as it turns out, is actually a pretty good bowler. His only downfall is that he isn’t actually that interested in winning when there are other interesting things going on. In three games, he pretty consistently bowled well every-other frame, meaning the strikes and spares he was getting weren’t having the compounding effect one would hope for.

The on again off again trend held for nearly all of Andrews games, leaving the last frame of the last game as a notable exception. Andrew bowled three strikes in a row! It was a fantastic finish to a morning of bowling.

We headed on to McCook to spend a little time with my parents. Have I mentioned that Heather and I like board games? We got our second chance to teach new players how to play the game St Petersburg, and I would say did a little better at teaching it. We also got in a round of Ticket To Ride. When not engaging in board games, we did get to enjoy some great weather in McCook (a place that seems to always have much warmer weather than we left in Des Moines), and eat at a great local pizza place.

The pizza place is noteworthy I suppose just for the pizza, but the more memorable thing is that it has a view of the switch yard. The yard was busy putting together a train while we ate. Andrew was perhaps 100 times more expressive about the event than I was, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t also thing it was a great thing to get to watch them push rail cars around while we ate. 🙂

On the drive home, we managed to make connections with some of Heather’s friends from college, missed connections with my sister, and then met up with a good friend of mine from high school before eventually making it back to Des Moines.

All in all, it was a very productive few days!

-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

4th of July!

Posted on by Jordan

I was told in the comments that recaps were required… I guess that means I will start at the top of the month and work my way back to current.

Heather and I went to Kearney to celebrate Independence Day with my family. In talking about the holiday sometime during the lead-up, I discovered that not only is the 4th not really Heather’s favorite holiday, but that she had it in her head that our children would not play with fireworks! I have informed her that there is no point in having kids if I cannot teach them to blow things up.

J_punk

The first day we were in Kearney we mostly just hung out, getting to interact with a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Later in the day my dad, Brother and I went out to buy some fireworks. I am amazed how much money you can spend on fireworks, but at the same time I found some really cool things without feeling too broke :).  Even later in the day Heather and I went for a bike ride, and got to see some of the UNK campus.

Finally, that evening the entire family went down for the big town fireworks show. I don’t think I will ever get tired of seeing the annual fire works shows done like that! It’s just so much fun, the noise, light, smells… just the whole experience!

The next day we lit more fireworks, ultimately concluding with an all-cousin show at dusk.

Heather actually had some fun watching, although I couldn’t really get her to light much in the way of fireworks.

HJ_punk

Sometime between the day-fireworks and the night-fireworks, the family arranged a composite birthday celebration for Heather and cousins who had birthdays close to the 4th. Heather even got to unwrap a few presents!

H_Sprout_Jar

Both the sprouting jar and the bowls in that picture have been enjoyed as much as Heather expected they would be when she opened them.

The next morning, we cleaned up fireworks for quite some time, but managed to have things looking almost civilized by around lunchtime. I realize at some point the cousins also cleaned out several hundred pounds of boxes from the attic, but I can’t seem to place when we did that. Wherever that all fit in… we had a lot of fun, and certainly were not bored all weekend!

-Jordan

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