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.