And We Are Back!

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Hey there!

Heather and I survived the Christmas build-up, Christmas travel, and even the post-Christmas blah that seems to hit once you get back to your apartment after seeing all your family.

Of course, all that happened over a week ago… It seems my posting has been delayed. I think I have been feeling overwhelmed by the idea of trying to recap the holidays in a way that somehow does justice to them, and also isn’t too boring to read.

After procrastinating this task for some time now, I realized it would be best to just put out this token post and then get back to whatever I felt like writing. Feeling obligated to post doesn’t do much for my frequency of posts.

So Christmas was fun! Heather and I spent the time with my family, getting to see quite a few members of the extended family on both my mom and dad’s side.

I want to say a lot more about how much we enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone, and what we did, but this will have to suffice rather than writing up a 5000 word post.

-Jordan

Cleaning (Not Quite Spring?)

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Heather and I had planned to head over to Blair for a Gutschow pre-Christmas event. However our nephew picked up something novel at daycare and decided to share it with the family as a sort of holiday treat. Heather and I were sad to learn that the event was canceled. Then again, given the “up all night puking” stories we were hearing, we thought that a phone call was probably as close as we wanted to be associated with the majority of that group for a while.

We did manage a few Christmas themed events over the course of the weekend, despite the abrupt change in plans. First off we attended a performance of “A Christmas Carol” Friday night. The venue was probably the smallest possible for a semi-pro group to use, but it was a fun event to be at. The audience was seated on three sides of the “stage”.   The stage consisted of the open floor between the chars, and some backdrops on the fourth and final wall. I will say again that it was a really enjoyable show, although the venue probably should have a large sign reading “HIPSTERS WELCOME.” I didn’t quite feel cool enough to be there… but I guess it was fine.

So that was Friday night, Saturday started kind of early as we had planned to help clean the church before heading to Blair. We found out Saturday morning that Blair was off, but still had to meet our cleaning crew bright and early so we headed over. All that cleaning was just a warm-up though as it turned out. When we got home Heather was feeling inspired to really attack the apartment.

She also claims my (purely innocent) pointing out that the show “Horders” was on Netlflix streaming guilt-tripped her into the cleaning spirit. I suppose that may have a little validity, as I may have started an episode playing for her at one point a few weeks back. Whatever the reason, after some generic cleaning Heather dove into sorting through her clothes.

As anyone who was gracious enough to help us move (in ether of the two moves) may remember, there were a lot of boxes marked “Heather’s clothes”. The allocation of closet space here in Des Moines has, at times, been a point of contention as I suppose would be expected.

The process took quite a few hours, and I often heard things like “I didn’t even know I had this!” or (while holding up something I could charitably describe as scanty) “Could you ever imagine me wearing this?” In the end, I have to say, Heather was willing to hold a hard line and parted with quite a few things:

Yes, you are seeing that correctly… FIVE bags of clothes waiting to head out the door. To be fair, my clothes make up some of that total. All the same, there was a lot more there than I ever expected to see go out the door! Strangely enough, our closets in no way seem empty at this point… I guess everything just has room to breathe now. 🙂

-Jordan

Topic-O-Rama

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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

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I are in the process of heading out to see family for the holiday, but I wanted to take a minute and put together a post.

We haven’t done all that much in the past week… oh yeah so I saw a recipe for Pumpkin Biscuits and found it really interesting. It was seasonally appropriate, and Heather tends to like anything with pumpkin in it.

The only problem is the quantities seemed overly large, and I didn’t want to experiment with such a huge batch.

My solution was to take the normal recipe I use for biscuits and add pumpkin to that. In the process, I thought it would be a good time to finally try making biscuits in the food processor. That may end up being the best discovery I made in this endeavor! Cutting in the shortening is always kind of a slow process, but with the food processor it’s done in about 30 seconds. I ended up being so fascinated by the success I was having I forgot to add the pumpkin until I already had the dough finished.

I don’t know when the ideal time to add the pumpkin would have been, but I guess adding it as the last ingredient worked ok. Well, I say ok, but this is when things started to go off the rails for the biscuits. I added 3/4ths of a cup of pumpkin to a recipe that only had two cups of flour. That was more pumpkin than I probably should have added. The results were a sticky mess. I could tell there was no way I was going to get them rolled out, the dough wasn’t thick enough to roll, even if it hadn’t been so sticky.

Initially I thought I could try adding some more flour, but then I worried that the biscuit-ness of the resulting paste might not be there anymore. Looking at what I had in the bowl a little more, I decided it was thick enough I could probably just scoop it onto the baking stone and see what happened.

The didn’t end up being the most attractive baked good ever, but Heather gave them high marks for taste! 🙂

-Jordan

The 2010 Wedding Season Draws To A Close

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Just thought I would sit down and type out a quick post, as Heather and I just got back from Kansas City, and the last wedding on our calendar for this year.

We closed the year with a wedding that contains a lot of ties to us.

First off, Casey was in our wedding. Second, we met Carson when he came as Casey’s date to our wedding, and finally I put together an awesome website for them! (Looking through the archives, I did the site sometime back in February)

Okay, maybe my making the website wasn’t a major point of connection, and to be honest hacking up a WordPress theme isn’t really much to brag about. The real connection is that Heather and Casey have been friends from early childhood. I have enjoyed getting to see Heather interact with such a great friend.

On a related note, I am glad to be done with weddings for the year! I tried not to be jealous of the wedding couple as they monopolized my wife’s time over the course of the weekend, but there isn’t a ton for a spouse of a bridesmaid to do during all the ancillary activities that take up the proceeding days before a wedding.

The plus side of a KC wedding is that we get to see our nephew on the trip! Heather is enamored with Holden, and complained vocally that I got to see him more than she did this time around. I should really throw up a picture as he seems to change ever time we see him!

I think that sums up another eventful weekend…. now I should go to bed, as somehow Monday is going to be here again already.

-Jordan

Deep Thoughts… Or Something

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Over the weekend, Heather and I drove out to western Nebraska for a wedding.

But before that, let me setup my frame of mind…

First I saw this video:

And then, the Internet being what it is, the remix video:

So, back to my drive out west. The song was kind of stuck in my head, and at the same time I was driving into an awe inspiring lightning show. I mean a really incredible storm! Clearly I all to easily forget how intense a storm can be.  I was really enjoying the lightning show, and started thinking about the guy in the video.

Now, I am afraid he may have been under the effects of some mind-altering chemicals at the time of that filming, but I don’t think that means he was wrong really. Rainbows, storms, all the other things you see outside… they are so amazing and I kind of take them for granted too often.

I actually have started investigating some ways to force myself to get outside, and outside of city limits, but I won’t post any details until I actually get something going. For now lets just leave it at enjoying the amazing show weather patterns in the Midwest can produce, and in awe of the splendor God has built around us.

-Jordan

Sunset Beach

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Heather and I went to North Carolina with her parents the second week of June. The place we stayed is apparently kind of a tradition for Heather’s family, called “Sunset Beach.” The area is actually an island of sorts, being cut off from the mainland by the “Intracoastal Waterway“, meaning that you have to wait for a little draw bridge to be closed to make it out to the island. They are in the process of building a much more substantial bridge, but for now the access remains pretty rustic.

Once we got to the beach house, we had an ambitious week of not doing all that much planned! Besides walking on the beach, and playing in the waves, I managed to squeeze in a little reading.

I read (in chronological order):

  • The Lost Fleet Book 5
  • The Millionaire Next Door
  • The Lost Fleet Book 6
  • Altered Carbon
  • Black Hawk Down

I will probably do some sort of a micro review of most of these, but the short version is that I enjoyed them all. Heather spent quite a bit of time reading too, we stuck together in the shaded deck of the beach house while most people were down on the beach. She didn’t manage quite as many books as me, I think in part because she was constantly distracted by our little nephew Holden.

By the end of the week, Heather and Holden were getting along well enough that she could hold him for extended periods of time without him crying. Everyone at the house enjoyed having him there, babies just provide so much entertainment it seems.

Mid way through the week, it was declared “Family Golf Day” (another tradition I guess) and the majority of us went to one of the many golf courses in the area. Now, Heather and I have been married for 13 months, so you might think we would have found the time to go golfing, or at least go to a driving range so she could show me how to swing a club. Somehow though, we hadn’t. I was more than a little concerned going into the even that I would be woefully outclassed, but I quickly discovered two things: I am at least competent at golf, and the “Family Golf Day” includes plenty of people who aren’t all that good. I think it helped that Heather and a few of the people on our team were providing great coaching, but I really enjoyed playing, and felt that I did ok!

The only really eventful part of our trip was the return. We started out early Saturday morning driving back to Charlotte NC, where our flight would then layover in Detroit, and eventually take us to Kansas City. We were hoping to then push through and drive back to Des Moines that night giving us an entire day home before going back to work.

Thing started off on a sort of bad foot when we were following the lead car through back-roads so small they didn’t even have lines painted on them. We assumed they had done some research on the map and had found some sort of optimal route to beat all the traffic going home from the beach. It was a scenic drive, if somewhat unnerving. We later found out they had mis-configured their GPS to pick routes with “no traffic” and really hadn’t meant to take us off the beaten path.

Once we got to the airport, we found out that our flight was at least two hours delayed, and possibly more thanks to major problems in Atlanta. This was going to be a problem as our connecting flight to KC was going to leave before we even boarded our plane to Detroit! The ticket agent managed to book us on the first flight to KC the next morning from Detroit, while still preserving our tickets on the flight we were destined to miss that day. Apparently that was bending the rules fairly aggressively. The rest of the day went almost exactly like it looked like it was going to, we boarded our flight about 2.5 hours later than we were suppose to, missing our flight to KC. An hour or so in line at the Delta counter in Detroit and we had two meal vouchers each and a hotel voucher for each couple in our group. Six dollars will not buy a real extravagant dinner, but we were more than ready to just grab something to eat quick and go to bed.

The next morning we got to the airport bright and early, got checked in and made our way to the gate. Things were looking good, no delays! Then the gate agent started paging that the flight was over-booked, and would anyone be willing to wait for a later flight. We were really concerned that maybe we weren’t going to get home after all. 40 minutes of this paging with nobody willing to give up their seat, and a woman who hadn’t been quite so early to the gate discovered that she didn’t have a seat on the plane. She went into total melt-down… It wasn’t pretty, I haven’t ever seen anything like it. After a few minutes Heather’s sister felt merciful, and offered to give up her seat. It turned out that she would not be able to get on the plane unless three people gave up their seats. After a few minutes of talking Kelsey, Jim and Pam all decided to give up their seats.

We boarded right on time and made it to Kansas City with no problems, but if you ask me there was a real air of “escaping in the nick of time” getting on the flight. The three people who stayed behind, managed to get on the noon flight (two hours behind ours) and made it with no other complications.

Despite the… adventure getting back, the vacation was very relaxing. Both Heather and I enjoyed the time to just slow down for a while.

-Jordan

Home!

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As I write this, I am happy to announce that I don’t have anywhere to be this weekend!

It’s only a partial victory;  Heather is, as we speak, returning from a wedding shower in Nebraska.

Still, I think it is a noteworthy occasion.

The last two weekends were spend in North Carolina, and I have plans to get a blog post up about that… Although honestly, not that much happened.

Should make for a nice short post then, right? 🙂 The only downside is I really didn’t take any pictures ether so I can’t even pad the post.

In the meantime, I am just going to enjoy being in town.

-Jordan

Lincoln Half-Marathon

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So there is a missing weekend, but I realize the longer I put off posing the more I feel obligated to do some sort of super-post that I don’t have time for right now. That train of though leads to no updates for two weeks!

Starting off the weekend, Friday night Heather and I had the rare opportunity to see one of my cousins compete in a gymnastics event! She qualified for the Western Nationals, an even that was held this year in Des Moines. My grandparents, sister, and an aunt all came into town as well, so we had a pretty good crew in the stands.

Saturday night we hit the road for Lincoln, planning just enough time to arrive at my sisters house and go straight to sleep. The sleep was important though, as we had to start rather early Sunday morning for the marathon.

Heather’s sister, and a cousin were both planning to run the half marathon! I had toyed with the idea of trying to at least run part of the time. My knee has actually held up pretty well during the cardio-kickboxing program we are wrapping up, but I can’t say as it’s 100% these days. I decided my goal would be to just keep up with Heather!

A few points:

  • Thirteen miles is a long ways!
  • We were not the last people to finish
  • At one point we even broke a sweat… kind of
  • My feet and calves are still sore

Although at the time, I may have felt that we were just out for a rather long and guided stroll… by the time we wrapped up the last few miles I was really feeling it. To put it mildly Heather and I have HUGE respect for anybody able to finish one of these!

-Jordan