Weekend Update

It wasn’t a terribly exciting weekend for us but we did get out and do a few things. Friday night was spent at home watching tv and then on Saturday I had a massage which was absolutely wonderful. For the past week, I had a headache that just would not go away and so I knew that something had to be going on with my neck/shoulders/back. It turned out I had an adhesion in my neck (explained here) that once she got out, my headache was gone within 30 minutes. We went to see a basketball game on Saturday night and had a pretty good time with that. It was a college women’s game and I know that sounds a little crazy, but we had really good seats and they actually are fun to go to. We went out to a nice dinner too before the game. It was a fun evening and a good way to celebrate our one-year anniversary since we got engaged. Rob had been feeling sick for a couple of days and it really hit him on Saturday night while we were out. We kept it low key after that so he could rest and I tried to stay away from him as much as I could. Sunday morning we did run a few errands, checked out an open house in our neighborhood just for fun and went out for some lunch. After that, we went back home and Rob rested while I caught up on some laundry, dishes and made dinner. We didn’t even rent any movies or anything like that over the weekend- we watched several CSI:Miami episodes though that I had recorded on A&E. I am addicted to that show like crack! I never used to watch it because I thought David Caruso was too much for me to handle but he is just so over the top that it is entertaining. With the lack of new programming these days, I gave it a try and am loving it. Anyhow, that’s about it for us- I warned you it wasn’t very exciting!

All the Things I've Been Meaning to Say

I’ve had plenty of material to blog about lately but have been so busy that I haven’t found the time to do it yet. Now that Christmas is over, I finally have some time. And speaking of Christmas, ours was quite wonderful. Although we missed our family terribly (no more Christmases away from them- ever!), it was fun to get all the packages in the mail and get moms' and dads' Christmas cookies and treats out here in Iowa. My husband got me a gift certificate to a day spa here in town for not just one but TWO massages. I will be calling later today to make an appointment to enjoy one of them as soon as possible. He also got me an “Our First Christmas” tree ornament that has our names engraved and has the year on it and has a place to put a picture of us in it. We found a wedding picture that we could use in it and hung it on the tree Christmas Eve. It is a close second for my favorite gift, maybe even a tie for favorite. The other favorite would have to be Mordecai, my new gnome for the yard. I had been wanting one for soooo long but couldn’t fine one I liked but my mom found me one and he’s perfect.



I also got some fake Uggs but in a different color than this (I didn’t want real ones until I could see if I liked them), a movie night basket (for both of us), slippers, fleece vest, a jello cookbook like I wanted and gift cards to Old Navy and Olive Garden. I did really good this year!

Rob did really good too- he got a trip to Florida to see the Daytona 500 in February from his wife. I was able to use our airline miles for free tickets to Florida and my parents let us use their timeshare so we don’t have to pay for lodging and I bought tickets from Ebay to see the race. Even though the tickets were a bit of a rip-off, not having to spend money for flights or lodging makes it seem a lot better. He got some other nice gifts too including new slippers, a beanie, gift cards to Old Navy and Lowes, a shirt, and The Bourne Ultimatum movie.



I made a roast that I added carrots and potatoes to and then we had peas and rolls with it. It turned out pretty darn good and it was super easy.



Last weekend, I made a TON of cookies (about 14 dozen) to make up plates of goodies to take to the neighbors, coworkers and friends. We still had a lot left and received some too from our parents so we’re going to have to store some in the freezer so they don’t go bad. And we’ll be able to have cookies until June this way- not bad!



Rob has been busy working some in the basement because our plan is for that to be our next project and we would like to start right after the first of the year. We set up one bedroom as our temporary media room and office but it is ridiculously crowded in there and we desperately need more space. We don’t know what to do about the flooring situation there and that is what has held us up. There are two issues that make just about every type of flooring impossible. The first issue is the existing asbestos tile that we can’t remove. If that were gone, I would love to just have concrete floors in the basement and then use rugs to warm it up. The second issue is moisture coming up through the ground and that makes everything else (carpet, tile, laminate, vinyl, etc) a bad choice. There is one product I found that I think would be a great choice- they are interlocking tiles that come in a variety of styles, including bamboo, which I really like- but they are a little pricey. Really, they aren’t too bad but we have a lot of area to cover which makes it too expensive for us right now. So we’ll just leave the tile in place and put rugs down for now to make the space usable and save our money up for some different flooring later. But be expecting more stories about our basement renovations!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Iowa! I have so much to blog about but am completely out of energy today so I'm going to have to put this off for another day. That and pictures are taking forever to load right now and I have a lot of those to share. We had a wonderful Christmas and both got a lot of great presents. It was actually quite warm today, up to 45 degrees, and we were able to get outside for a while this afternoon. No snow for Christmas but there is still some on the ground so we did have a white Christmas which is a lot of fun. I made a roast for dinner and we enjoyed that and have nice, full tummies now. I hope everyone else had as great of a Christmas as we did and I promise to post more details soon!

The Office Christmas Party

Yesterday we had our Christmas party at work which was a potluck during the lunch hour. Not so impressive if you look at the Christmas party Brent and Nanette went to for Brent’s work but this is Iowa. We do jello salad, not celebrities. As a matter of fact, jello salad is exactly what I brought. I love it and would love to get a jello cookbook with all kinds of jello salad in it. Yum! I actually signed up to bring that because I can do that in my sleep and I don’t have to worry about screwing it up. But I had a second, secret dish that I wanted to make to but it was a new one and I didn’t want to advertise it in case things went poorly. It was a triple layer Lemon Raspberry Cake, the best kind of cake. For the few of you that know what Brent and Nanette’s Lemon Raspberry wedding cake tasted like, it wasn’t nearly that good. But nothing is. Still, this was a very good looking and tasting cake. The recipe seemed easy enough to make and it definitely was. The triple layer factor made it seem very impressive, as did the fresh raspberries and lemon zest curls on the top. I received several compliments on it, some even still today from people I didn’t even realize I worked with or who had eaten it. I wish I had taken some pictures of it before it had been enjoyed so much. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me so this is the only picture I did get of it and it was with my cell phone camera. Let’s just pretend it originally looked like the picture on the Betty Crocker website, okay, because that’s close enough!

Oh Tannenbaum

Rob mentioned our Christmas tree in the last post and I have been meaning to post some pictures of Christmas-y living room ever since. I just didn't want to do it until I got a tree skirt so you don't have to look at our ugly tree stand and scrap of carpet that the stand is sitting on! Every year I think, "I really need to get a tree skirt to cover everything" but I end up using an old white sheet which has worked well and been free. Somehow in all my moving around since last Christmas, I lost the white sheet. It could be in one of the boxes that are still full of stuff and sitting in the garage but it wasn't worth looking for. I finally broke down and spent $4.99 on a new red tree skirt at Target last Friday. It turned out to just be a big round piece of felt with some scalloped edges so I had to do some modifications to get a slit on one side and get the middle cut out for the tree. I also picked up a nativity scene while I was there, something I had been wanting for a while but could not find one I liked. There was a really nice that was about $50 but I bought the one for $10. It's still really nice and I didn't want to spend a fortune on it, especially since Rob wasn't with me. I tried to find links to both these items on Target's website but they were not on there. Bad Target!

So! Now we have a tree skirt, a nativity set and I am ready to share what the living room looks like, all Christmas-ed out.

Weekend at the North Pole

This is Rob for a change:

This just in...we are living in a Christmas movie. A "Hallmark Family Christmas Special" right here at the house. This past weekend, we bought a tree and hauled it home. There really is something special about decorating a tree with the snow falling outside.

After the sun came out for a while on Sunday afternoon, I took a few shots in the backyard of tracks in the snow left by some of the wildlife.

While I know that this may get old after a while, I was really having fun shoveling the sidewalks and driveway. In Iowa, shoveling snow is the wintertime equivalent to keeping your lawn in top shape during the summer. Let me elaborate on that. It is not the task at hand so much as it is an important topic of conversation in the neighborhood. So there I am, out there with John (from next door) assessing the situation like we are about to perform surgery. When to shovel, what kind of shovel to use for different conditions, salt/no salt, and how much snow you think is coming the next week. I know that this sound silly, but there is kind of an art to it. Shovel too early and you are out there twice. Too late (with the extremely cold temperatures we had last night) and you have 3" of ice that is not going anywhere for a long time. The discussion carried over at work this morning as well. "Well Rob, did you need ice skates on your front porch this morning?" I was happy to hand out a few witty (read smart ass) comments back at them when I let them know that even former Californians know how (and more importantly when) to shovel.

No need to tell them just yet about the neighborhood Snow Shoveling Forum.

Until next time

Leftovers and Christmas Lights

Rob really got into reusing our Thanksgiving leftovers this past weekend. On Friday, he used the mashed potatoes to make some German potato dumplings that he loves that his grandmother and mom made. The technical name for them? "Round Things" he says. I wish I could tell you better what they are but they were yummy and I guess that's all that matters. On Saturday he used most of the leftover turkey and made Turkey Macaroni Casserole that was really good too. He made a few modifications to use what we had for noodles and soup choices but it was still delicious. Finally, yesterday he made some Yamberry Muffins out of our leftover yams. Here he is cooking up the "Round Things."



We worked a bit on some chores around this house during the long weekend and the most exciting part was putting the Christmas lights on the house yesterday. We waited until Sunday since that was the warmest day we had- it got all the way up to 44 degrees. It was still kind of chilly and windy but we got the job done and they look great- despite the blurry picture below. I also changed out Stuart's ribbon from his Thanksgiving gear to his Christmas-themed ribbon. We still have a 3-foot tall plastic Santa that we got at a yard sale this past summer for $7 and it needs to be put out but we've got some work to do before he's ready.

Thanksgiving Review

I was a little nervous about doing all our own cooking for Thanksgiving, especially since we were going to prepare so many different things. Okay, we bought the pie but that was it. We cooked everything else. The item that was the scariest was definitely the turkey breast but we just followed the directions on the package and it came out great! Actually, everything did. We ate around 5:00 last night and had a wonderful meal. Maybe next year we'll be brave enough to invite people over to eat with us. Here are some photos.

Crescent rolls, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole and sweet potatoes in an orange flavored sauce:


Jello salad, mashed potatoes (in the striped bowl), cranberry sauce and turkey:


Here's a photo of us at our little table- we have a much bigger and nicer one but we decided to eat here in the kitchen and enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner in our new kitchen and watch the snow just outside the window:

New Trick Up My Sleeve

I have a Mac computer which I absolutely love but I do find there are some issues with having a Mac at times. Not all websites work for Macs and when they do, you sometimes get a limited version of it and it's missing features and options that PC users have. For instance, when I blog from a PC, there are about seven different buttons to help me do things like add links, make words bold or italicized or even to upload video. I have never had these options on my Mac and had to learn a lot of code to be able to do these things that others can do so easily. Apparently, Blogger decided to give all of us Mac users a Thanksgiving present because now I have those options too! One thing I never learned the code for was to add video. Now that I can do that, I couldn't wait to try it. I took a short clip of the snow falling yesterday just outside our house and decided to share it all. You can see it wasn't snowing a lot yesterday, just some light snow that was so pretty falling down.

Update: Though you can see the snow good when the video is bigger, it isn't showing up too good here. Darn it! I'll leave it up though so you can see our snowy neighborhood.

Happy Thanksgiving!

First of all, a few pictures of the snow from yesterday. I may have fallen asleep on the couch last night rather early and didn't get a chance to do this last night like I had planned. Oops.

Just starting to snow outside my window at work:



Snowing a bit more while I was still at work:



What our house looked like when we got home:



And finally, what our backyard looked like last night (and actually still does this morning):



It ended up snowing quite a bit more yesterday than was expected. We got 1-2 inches here and they weren't even sure we would get any. And even more unexpected? It's snowing again this morning! Not too much, just enough to look really beautiful.

We're watching the parade this morning on tv and Rob had to run to the store this morning for a few more things. I went yesterday after work but forgot the bananas for the jello salad. I also did not buy cranberry sauce because I don't like it. Oops- turns out Rob does like it and wanted some. And since he left the bag of groceries he brought in for me yesterday sitting in the laundry room, we needed more milk, cool whip and lettuce to replace what I just bought yesterday. He thought I put them away and I thought he did and it turned out nobody did. I already made the jello salad this morning but that's it so far. I was planning on us eating around 1:00 or 2:00 but it seems our boneless turkey breast isn't quite thawed out yet. We need some more time, it is close to being thawed, so I think we'll be eating around dinnertime now, maybe 5:00 or 6:00. Our menu is:

Turkey
Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Stuffing
Yams
Jello Salad
Green Bean Casserole
Cranberry Sauce
Crescent Rolls
Pumpkin Pie

More pictures and reviews later to let you all know how it turns out!

Okay, Now It's Snowing!

Now it is really starting to come down. The ground is white and it's totally covering everyone's cars. It is so pretty! I went outside to take a better picture. It's still with my cell phone camera so it's not great. I promise to put more photos up later tonight when I get home.



Though I am loving the snow, it will be a bummer tonight when I have to go to the grocery store for a few last items for Thanksgiving dinner.

It's Snowing!

It started snowing about 30 minutes ago- our first snow of the season! I've been running all around telling everyone and taking pictures. No one at work seems nearly as excited as I am. In fact, some people don't seem very happy about it at all. But I am!! Here's what the weather people are saying:

Snow Advisory in effect until 6 PM CST this afternoon... Periods of snow will continue across central Iowa through the afternoon. Gusty winds of 15 to 25 mph will produce areas of reduced visibilities. An inch of snowfall will be possible in the next couple of hours as bands of snow move through the area. Total snowfall expected with this storm will be 1-3 inches with isolated 4 inch amounts possible through tomorrow morning.


I took a picture on my phone to share but I will post the rest later when I get home. This is looking out of my window at work. It doesn't look like it's snowing that much but it kind of is. It's not piling up on the ground yet but maybe in a few hours it will.

Fun with Google

I don’t know how many of you frequently use Google but I use their Gmail all the time, their maps feature is great and even Blogger is hooked up with it. They have a way to personalize the Google page on your computer and they call that iGoogle. (I would love to put in links to all these things but when I did, it went to my personal account and I'm afraid everyone could get into my email which I don't really want. I'm trusting you to find it on your own from the main www.Google.com page.) My favorite thing about iGoogle, and the thing I want to share with all of you, is their setting for “Themes”. It’s probably more of a girl thing because most of the cartoons are very cutesy and are things guys would not appreciate. They have several different "themes" (or scenes) you can select from and they just added about 5 more. I noticed it yesterday but perhaps they’ve had them for a while. There are scenes with people at a bus stop, a cityscape but the best are the ones with the little cartoon animals who do different activities throughout the day. I had it set on “Tea House” which had a little fox who would sleep in his sleeping bag, pick oranges, do laundry, fish on the pond, eat lunch and several other things. You also enter your zip code and it will mimic your weather as well as the sunrise and sunset. Maybe I’m a total geek for liking to see what the cartoons do throughout the day, but it does bring a smile to my face and I just thought I’d pass it on.

P.S.- You do have to sign up with them but then you get to personalize your Google page with all kinds of gadgets/widgets. I have brain teaser games, news, weather, recipes, and comics, among other things, that I get every day so it totally makes it worth it. I also highly recommend the Gmail and if you would like to have it, let me know so I can send you an invite.

Pretty as a Flower

This weekend we worked in the yard a bit more, doing our final yard clean-up for the year and finishing planting the rest of bulbs I purchased at Sam’s Club. I had already planted about 50 assorted fancy bulbs and I topped it off this weekend by planting 100 mixed-color tulip bulbs, 40 narcissus bulbs and another 10 hyacinth bulbs. If it turns out good, it should be amazing. If they start to bloom and then it snows again (like this past spring), it could be trouble. But I’m willing to gamble on it because I love all the spring bulbs! This should conclude my posts on yardwork until probably about March or April because it will be that long until we need to mow or do anything again because of the snow.

Speaking of snow, we still have not had any. Last year, they got the first bit of it on November 10th and it’s not uncommon to have some in October (so we’ve been told). This past weekend the highs were in the 60s which is a little unusual, but really awesome. Now the 10-day forecast is claiming a 60% chance of snow showers for next Wednesday and Thursday. It might be kind of fun to have a white Thanksgiving.

And speaking of Thanksgiving, Rob and I are hosting our own, just for ourselves, this year. We’re looking forward to cooking it all up in our own house and in our brand new kitchen. I bought quite a few of the things I would need for it yesterday. I learned a few years back that you don’t wait until a day or two before Thanksgiving and think you will find cream of mushroom soup, cool whip, green beans or crescent rolls. So I bought everything I could ahead of time but we’ll have to get some things a day or two before because you just have to. The one thing I’m not sure about what to do concerns the turkey. Two people don’t really need a whole turkey and the thought of preparing one for cooking grosses us both out. I was looking into just getting a turkey breast or two but they seemed so small and I know we’ll want some leftovers. My latest idea is to see if I can buy a whole turkey cooked or at least all cleaned up and tied up and ready to be stuck in the oven. I think that’s the best idea for us. I’ll be sure to post pictures that day and let you know how it all turns out.

Go Green!

More contest news- I found a new one to enter! This contest has a $20,000 grand prize so you can make your house green (not actually the color, just more environmentally friendly) which I think is a fantastic idea. You can go to the Duraflame website to enter. In the meantime, I will continue to fight the good fight with my husband to make our house as green as we can. The man loves his incandescent light bulbs and I can't seem to convince him to use the CFLs. I buy them but they just sit in the box. I try to appeal to the side of him that likes to save money but even that doesn't work. I think I'm just going to slowly start replacing them all without telling him and hope he doesn't notice.

I Give Up

I have come to the conclusion that my life is not exciting enough to blog about everyday. Monday we were boring. Tuesday we were boring. So far today is also pretty boring. I think I prefer to wait a few days and save up stories until there is something good to tell so I hereby announce that I am giving up on the blogging every day challenge. It’s not for me. I have learned though to be better about blogging more often and that was all I wanted.

So. We did rent Spiderman 3 on Monday and watched it that evening. Rob really wanted to see it over the weekend but we had no luck obtaining a copy of it to watch. We had tried to use the “On Demand” feature of our cable service to order it online but they didn’t have it yet. Rob called Hollywood Video to see if they had any copies over the weekend but they did not. So finally on Monday afternoon we found one there. I really enjoyed it and I hope they make more. I don’t believe I have ever read a comic book in my life but make a movie about comic book characters and I will be the first one in line. I love Spiderman, Superman, Batman but especially the X-Men. I am so looking forward to the Wolverine movie coming out.

It is really cold here. Really super cold. When I left for work this morning, it was 20 degrees outside. Rob checked the weather online last night and it said that it was 69 degrees in Fresno, CA and it was only 29 degrees where we are. There is supposed to be some rain this weekend and I suppose if it is still cold enough, there could be some snow. But that’s not what they are forecasting now- just rain and it’s actually supposed to warm up a bit. I am looking forward to some snow though because it is so beautiful. It wouldn’t be so bad to have some for Thanksgiving. I’ll be sure to put up some pictures when we do get some.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Fall is absolutely my favorite season. The time change and the whole "Fall Back, Spring Ahead" thing got me thinking about fall and that I should share some photos of all the fall colors in our backyard. We have one beautiful bush/tree thing called a "Burning Bush" that is really bright red and is just stunning to look at. The color is so intense.

A close up of some leaves:


The Burning Bush:


We took a few at a nearby park a few weeks ago too that I think we're going to frame for our orange and green themed bedroom. I recently discovered that you can upload photos to Walgreens and have them blown up to poster size for really cheap.

Already Blew It

Well, looks like Day 3 of the National Blog Posting Month (aka NaBloPoMo) was my downfall. I already blew it- I just totally forgot to blog yesterday. We were busy doing all kinds of things and I never thought about it. We got up pretty early and went to the grocery store and bought waffle mix, among other things, so we could make a big breakfast. We didn't actually end up making any waffles until this morning but we still had a big breakfast. After that we worked in the yard. Rob mowed the lawn and put on the winter fertilizer while I planted hyacinth, giant allium, some tulips, some more tulips and even more tulips. Those were some specialty bulbs that I picked up in another town at a small nursery- now I need to go to Sam's Club and buy some big bags of cheaper bulbs and plant those in big drifts in the front yard. We got all cleaned up and it was time for Rob to go get his haircut at the mall. While he was there, he decided he felt like shopping but then wanted me there too to help make some decisions. He picked me up at the house and we headed back over and picked out a couple of shirts for him. I looked around and tried on a few things but the trip ended abruptly when a very stupid lady totally ran over the back of my foot with one of those ginormous fire truck stroller stupid things. It hurt so bad, I cussed at her (did I tell you how bad it hurt?) and then I went to get Rob and we left. I also gave the pushy lotion kiosk guy the business when he attempted to sell me some of his crappy lotion about 10 seconds after my big accident. When we got out to the car, I took my shoe off to find a bloody sock and then my foot all torn up and bloody. We came home and got me fixed up and then watched some racing and went to bed. I also got some laundry done during the day. So though it wasn't the best day ever, it was productive. We'll have to find something fun to do today.

As for the NaBloPoMo challenge, maybe I'll just post twice today and then I'll maintain a once-a-day average. That's pretty close.

Look What I Won!

I love to enter contests- and buy lottery tickets too, for that matter. I always hope to be a big winner but usually it's just a little something here and there, enough to keep me hooked and thinking my turn is right around the corner. I entered myself and Rob to win the HGTV Fall Fix-Up every day of that contest. Nothing. Now I'm entering us in the DIY Network Kitchen and Bath Remodel sweepstakes. Probably won't get anything there either but I'll try. So what have I won? Only the classiest prize one could imagine.

It came in the mail a few days ago in this envelope:



Isn't it great?



No, it's not great and it doesn't even come close to fitting me or look flattering. But at least I won something- one more thing to keep me going in my quest to be a grand prize winner. There was a code inside a box of some beer Rob bought and the grand prize was a trip to the Super Bowl. That's pretty cool right? I got excited when I entered the contest and they congratulated me on being a winner- until I saw what it was I won. It is pretty funny I suppose but dang it! Guess I'll just have to keep trying.

National Blog Posting Month

November is National Blog Posting Month and though I didn't officially sign up, I am going to take on the challenge. I suppose the real challenge would be over Thanksgiving for most people but since we're not going anywhere, it shouldn't be too bad. I just can't promise that the postings will be that entertaining but they will be here. We will try to come up with some entertaining stuff over the next month though.

Once again, I know it's been a while since my last blog but I had a very good reason! My computer kept shutting off for no reason at all when it was turned on. Rob did a little research and it turns out that this is a problem with a certain group of 20-inch iMac G5 computers with the EMC number of 2056. Of course, that would include mine. We took it down to Des Moines this past Monday night which turned out to be quite an adventure. A few of the freeways we take to get there were shut down because a solvent plant exploded that afternoon. We took a different route that we decided we actually liked a little better since it was more scenic and had a lot less people. They were able to fix my computer right there at the Apple Store in about 15 minutes. We put it back in the car and went and had a nice dinner.

I guess I better stop now so I'll have something for tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day....

Go Dogs

An update by Rob:

Good night to be a guy around the house. Pizza, NASCAR qualifying, and a chance to watch the Bulldogs play on ESPN. Living in Iowa, we do not get a chance to see Fresno State play much on TV. Tonight, my alma mater is playing the Broncos from Boise State. Should be quite a game as both teams are undefeated in the WAC.

People around here are big Iowa State Cyclone fans (I guess we are too now that we are here). I was talking about Fresno State today with some friends and they asked, "How do you think Fresno State would do against a Big 12 school like Iowa State?" I told them that, "I would be afraid..." "Of what, Rob?" Confidently I replied, "I would be afraid that Fresno State would run up the score!" Not a lot of smiles after that comment.

Not Getting Any Better

So another week has gone by before I got around to posting on the blog but I have some news- next month is "National Blog Posting Month" and the challenge is to blog every day for the month of November. I'm going to try it and hopefully I can make it.

My parents went home on Wednesday and I was sad to see them go. We won't be making a trip for the holidays and I won't see them again until February. We had a lot of fun playing cards with them quite a few nights while they were here and the guys turned out to be the big winners at the end of the week. My mom and I started to make a comeback but it didn't quite happen. I took Tuesday off while they were here and we went to Pella, a small town with a strong Dutch heritage east of Des Moines. It had a very cute downtown that was inspired by Amsterdam. We had a delicious lunch at the Windmill Cafe and bought a lot of treats at the Jaarsma Bakery.





We took a few days to recover and do laundry and clean up but we did go out on Saturday. We went to Des Moines to do some shopping where I got some new shoes (except mine are in black), some stuff for the kitchen and Rob got his shaving supplies which I like to refer to as his "Man Make-Up." We also went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then came home. Apparently we don't get out too much during the evening hours because we were shocked to see all the Halloween decorations that people had up. I've never seen houses with lights on them for Halloween! I took a picture of one to share as an example.



I can't wait to see what people do around here for Christmas!

Another Week, Another Posting

Geez, I have been bad about posting new entries lately- at least now it is bad because we have been really busy instead of not doing anything. My parents arrived on Wednesday evening last week and we've been touring around with them. I was able to leave work at noon on Thursday so I took them to the Reiman Gardens. They know so much about plants and flowers and what everything was so it was great to go there again with them and learn a little more.





We visited the butterfly building where there were a lot of butterflies- around 800 to 1,000 they told us. There were so many different ones and they were beautiful. In the first picture below, I pointed this out to my mom and said, "Look how this one's wings come away from its body in the middle. That's really unusual and looks cool!" My mom laughed and laughed at me and then clued me into the fact that maybe that wasn't just one butterfly but rather two of them getting their butterfly love on. It's fairly obvious in the picture but I couldn't tell when I first saw them. Oops!





Friday wasn't too exciting. I left work at noon like I usually do on Fridays and we went to Target and I drove them around town for a little tour. We also dropped off a bill at city hall. Wow. But yesterday was really a LOT of fun. We all went to the Madison County Bridge Festival and ate our way around Winterset, Iowa. We also took the bus tour that the Rotary Club was doing to 4 of the 6 remaining covered bridges. It was a beautiful drive around Madison County although the 2 hour tour was much longer than I was expecting. It seemed to go by really fast though and it was very enjoyable.





Winterset is also the home of Marion Robert Morrison, more commonly known as John Wayne. They have a museum there in the house he grew up in which would have been pretty cool to see but it was already getting late in the day and we were wanting to leave. It was dinnertime when we left there so we drove home and stopped on the way at the Outback Steakhouse (or the Outhouse Steakback as I have been known to accidentally call it). I had some chicken that was good but the best part was the baked sweet potato with butter and cinnamon on it. YUM-MY! I even have leftovers to look forward to today. In fact, that is probably our biggest excitement today. We were going to go on a cruise of the Mississippi River but it is raining quite a lot and it's supposed to be like that all day. We decided it was better to just stay home and relax today. I've got some more things planned before they leave and it's really nice just to spend some time together, not doing much.

Weekend Review

I haven't written much lately because it seems we haven't done anything very exciting lately. See below for proof.



Does everyone care that we ordered a Dumpster for yard waste last weekend and we have been pulling weeds and cleaning up the back yard since then? Probably not. The back yard has been, and continues to be, a struggle for us because I think it was neglected for a while and now we're stuck trying to get it back in shape. It will be wonderful someday but this is something that really takes some time to do. Our front yard looks great and I've been excited because my clearance-rack Dahlia bulbs started blooming this past week and they look great (they're yellow). I had no hopes for them because they were totally cheap and I planted them rather late but they are doing wonderful.

So this weekend we barbecued steaks on Friday night and I watched Pushing Daisies that I had recorded from Wednesday night. It had gotten a lot of great reviews so I decided that I would give it a try. I am giving no other shows a try because I already think I have too many. Anyhow, it was a little bizarre but in a great way. I wouldn't say I'm hooked after only the first show but it's looking that way. On Saturday, I went to the gym (Rob's back has been hurting so he stayed home) and then we went out to lunch and I picked up a new Barenaked Ladies album. So it turns out it has been out since February and I just now figured it out. For a big fan of BNL, I sure blew that one. We worked a little around the house, ordered pizza and watched We Are Marshall. I knew it would make me cry but I couldn't believe how much. I gave up after a little more than an hour because I just kept crying almost the whole time. I decided that was not a fun way to spend my evening so I ended up reading my book instead while Rob finished watching the movie. Today, we went to church, the grocery store, mowed the lawn, cooked a little and I baked some Snickerdoodles. They're very good if you like that kind of cookie, which I don't really. But that's good because then I'm not tempted to eat them. I'm sending them to work with Rob so he can share them. I love to bake but two people don't need 4 dozen cookies. Here's a picture of them.



Besides that, I've been busy posting some more photos from our wedding that our photographer took on my Flickr site so check that out if you are totally bored sometime :o)

Change of Plans

The first set of parents visited and though some of the things we had planned didn't happen, we had a wonderful time. We didn't go to the German Festival or do the river cruise but we did go to the Reiman Gardens and Rob took them to see the sprint car museum in Knoxville. For lunch one day, we took them to our favorite restaurant. Pop put our barbeque together so we cooked up some steaks on the new grill one night. Here are a couple photos from the visit.

(I had trouble posting photos tonight but I imported the photos below from Flickr so you can see them there.)

My parents will be visiting next week and I think we'll try the river cruise again with them. We've been taking it a little easy after the visit since we were so busy trying to get things looking good around the house. I ordered a 3-yard Dumpster and we worked in the backyard this weekend. The weather was so beautiful and it was just really nice to be outside.

Suburban Restaurant

Suburban Restaurant
Originally uploaded by 2054 Miles

Entrance to Reiman Gardens

Entrance to Reiman Gardens
Originally uploaded by 2054 Miles

BBQ with Rob's Parents

BBQ with Rob's Parents
Originally uploaded by 2054 Miles

Meet The Parents

Rob’s parents are on their way to Iowa right now, even as I type this. It’s so fun to have visitors! I’m so excited to see them and for them to see our house and where we live and for them to understand that we’re not crazy for moving so far away. We got the house all cleaned up and the boxes that were all over the house are either in the garage or basement. It’s kind of strange to have the house cleaned up and looking like a home instead of a job site. We’re usually dodging boxes and tool buckets and all kinds of stuff and we don’t have to worry about that anymore. It looks wonderful and I can’t wait to share it with them.

We have been working on some fun activities and places to take them but we don’t want to have an itinerary or try to cram too many things into the visit. We want to make sure we have plenty of time to just enjoy the company. Tonight there is a Music Walk downtown that is sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce so we’ll probably check that out. Saturday will be our adventure day- we’re going to check out the Guttenberg German Festival and take a cruise on the Mississippi River to check out the fall leaves. It’ll be a long day with probably 400 miles of driving but it’s beautiful in the northeast part of the state and I think that everyone will enjoy it. Other than that, we’re just going to have fun visiting and showing them around our town.

I Want My Baby Back

I picked up Rob from the airport Friday after I got off work at noon and it’s so great to have him home again. We were only apart for a few days but I hated it! We got some lunch and ran some errands in Des Moines before heading home. There are a ton of things to do to get ready for his parents’ visit this week and though we didn’t do much Friday evening, we were very busy on Saturday and Sunday. We were going to be bold and paint our bedroom some shade of green but we couldn’t agree on one and finally decided to stick with Valspar's Churchill Hotel Vanilla (the color we used in the hall and other three bedrooms) because we like it so much. Our floors and wood trim are a very yellowy color and that makes picking a wall color pretty tricky. The hotel room from our honeymoon in Aruba is providing the inspiration for what our room will look like.



I love the green and orange and the color scheme looks great with the curtains and pillows we already picked up at Ikea. It's just too bad we don't have that same view out our window! I ordered an orange quilt to go across the bottom of the bed and it also comes with two pillow shams. All we need now is a few accessories and it’ll be done. Rob built the bed and we got the mattress on it but we haven’t slept in the master bedroom yet because the paint and the foam mattress are quite a powerful combination in producing strong odors. We’re keeping the windows open to let it air out and probably won’t sleep in there until Thursday though we’re both very anxious to sleep in our new room. It was a very productive weekend but we still need to mow the yard, clean, finish master bedroom, clean out remaining boxes in living room, finish one of two last cabinets in kitchen. . .

The Place is Hot

I just learned on Wikipedia that the origin of the name of Phoenix is Native American for "the place is hot." I don't know how you would translate "Hotter Than The Fires of Hell" in Navajo, but they should have named it that. As I mentioned in the previous post, we weren't exactly looking forward to our trip to Phoenix but we were determined to try and enjoy it. So I'm going to skip over the fact that it was over 90 degrees by 9:00 a.m. and the high every day was 108 and get on to the good stuff. First of all, I was surprised at the size of the airport and the size of the town (both huge!). Well, to call it a town wouldn't really be correct- it's more like one big blob of sprawl running into the next. I did find it to be very pretty with the mountains all around and the desert landscape is beautiful in its own way. (I know I'm not being all that positive but I'm trying!) We were on the 19th floor of our hotel which afforded us a pretty good view of the area.




You can see the baseball stadium in the picture above- it's the only building that has its roof open. We went there and took in a Diamondbacks-Cardinals game on Sunday afternoon. It was a cheap and fun way to spend the afternoon and we had a good time. They had the roof closed for the game though and I have to say it felt a little weird to watch baseball being played indoors. Weird, but nice and cool.





There was a nice shopping/theater/restaurant area nearby that we ate at a few times. It seems they're really doing a lot in Phoenix to spruce up their downtown and it looked great. There was a parking garage across the street from our hotel that Rob had no idea was a parking garage because it was done so well. I wouldn't have thought it was one either except I saw the small sign and the place where the cars enter and exit. It's good to see cities investing so much in their downtowns because a vital city needs that. Anyhow, that was about it. We were going to see The Bourne Ultimatum but we never made it. The hotel had a really nice gym that we both went to a few times. I spent 3 hours at the pool on Monday and my shoulders were a fiery red color that is now beginning to fade. My flight back was uneventful and NOT fun. There was a rather large man in the seat next to me. Well, he was actually partly in my seat too and that was the problem. I was very happy to get back to Iowa and get home. I'll be even happier when Rob gets home. My final verdict on Phoenix is this: Nice place to go if you are trying to get away from your snowed-in house. If that's not the case, stay where you are because it's probably better there.