Summer Weekend

Matt and I tried to remember this week the last time we actually went out for "date night" on a Friday night. This was a tradition we started when we were first married and every Friday night when neither of us have other plans we go out together. Sometimes we try new restaurants, and sometimes we got without old favorites. Sometimes we go do something else in addition to dinner.

Last night we tried out Ted's Nebraska Grill. A few weeks ago we got a $10 coupon in the mail for Ted's and thought we would try it out. The menu was really extensive (as long as you want meat) and both Matt and I tried the a bison burger - mine with guacamole, green chilis, and pepper jack and Matt's with bacon, cheese, bbq sauce. I really enjoyed mine and did not find the bison to be much different than beef - but the lower fat content keeps it from holding together as well - it was really nice and tender. The nice thing is we got the coupon back to continue using if we want to.

I headed to the gym for a consultation with my new trainer, Josh, this morning. We talked about the nutrition plan I will be following along with my exercise plan. I have my first workout with him on Monday. The nutrition plan and cardio plan are a new thing for me - my previous trainer just worked with me on weights but left cardio and nutrition up to me. I'm now eating 5 small meals a day and watching my protein, fat and carb intake at every meal. Tracking my meals will be a new thing for me and I am excited to see how it works.

We have a couple of errands to run today (Target, Hobby Lobby, etc) and may head to the Countryside Art Festival later.

Back from the silence

My sister informed me that I need to update my blog because I am not in California anymore. She is correct...it is 3 stinkin' degrees outside which is definitely not characteristic of most of California. Matt and I went to the Creighton basketball game with Dan and Becky last night and then went to Barley's Tiptop for some drinks. After driving them back to their car (we left it at California Pizza Kitchen after dinner so we only had one car downtown) we arrived home at about midnight. The gauge on our car indicated it was a balmy 48 degrees outside. I remember not buttoning my jacket when we walked out of the Qwest.

I woke up this morning to the sound of wind howling so I turned on the tv to find out what the temperature was and discovered it was 10 degrees. I think that was our high for the day. Matt and I headed out to do some Christmas shopping and froze running in and out of buildings. But, we got some very important Christmas shopping done! Ma tt talked to his sister this afternoon and they went from 60 degrees to 20 degrees in about 30 minutes!

I also finished decorating our hearth tonight. I started working on it last week and bought the finishing touches today. I included a picture below just for fun.

In January, our household is growing! Pell and Bren have decided to move back to the midwest and Omaha was on their list of possible cities to move to. Matt and I let them know that they would be welcome to move in with us until Pell finds a job and they are able to sell their house in Oregon. They have taken us up on our offer so we are gaining three roommates (they are bringing their cat with them) around January 25th! We are excited to have them close by and thrilled that they will be able to live with us while they figure things out! We will be spending some time over our holiday breaks getting the house ready.

I am working a 4 day work week this week (I'm taking Friday off to finish some Christmas shopping and get some things done) and then I only work Monday and Tuesday the following week. I love working in Higher Ed - especially Creighton because we were supposed to be off until January 2nd, but the university imposed a mandatory vacation day so I don't have to go back until January 5th. Twelve straight days off! And I need it - especially since we have plans to go to Shelbina for a few days and then thought we would head to Saint Louis because Gregg is home for the holidays and there is a Jameson baby we haven't met yet!

I have decided to give candy making a try this year and will be starting with english toffee. I bought a candy thermometer the other day and plan to make a batch sometime in the next week. I need to figure out when the humidity will be the lowest - maybe next Sunday since the high is supposed to be 5!

I love Southwest!

My travel season has begun and I will start out this entry with a little “shoutout” to my personal favorite airline – Southwest! I flew Southwest to Denver today and am now sitting in the Denver Airport waiting for my next flight (on Southwest) to Portland, OR. The Denver to Omaha service is a new service that just started earlier this month and while my flight here was not quite full, I hope the fullness of the flight is a good indication that the service will remain. I find it incredible that while most airlines are cutting flights, routes, and cities, Southwest is actually expanding. I heard that they are in a really good position right now because they elected to lock in a fuel price awhile back so they are not paying the astronomical prices for gas that the other airlines are paying. I also have to believe that they are just really smart about the way they do things. The Southwest crew and staff are always incredibly friendly. It isn’t that the staff and crew on other airlines are unfriendly, I have just encountered some people who really don’t seem as though they like their jobs very much. It seems to me that the Southwest staff always appear to like their jobs. About 10 minutes into our flight to Denver (which is about an hour and 15 minute flight) one of the crew (our crew had 2 women and a man – which I also notice on Southwest fairly often – lots of men on the crew) asked if there were any medical professionals on board and if so, could they come back to the back of the plane. There was some sort of medical emergency with a passenger that lasted pretty much throughout the flight. I felt the staff handled everything in a very calm manner, and most people on board the plan probably didn’t even know what was going on. I was near the back so I had a little bit better idea, but except for the fact that the crew did not serve a full beverage service, I doubt most people even had any idea what was going on. When they first made the announcement I began thinking that we may have to turn around because, let’s face it, there aren’t very many places to stop between Omaha and Denver. I would imagine that one of the airports (McCook, North Platte, Grand Island, Kearney or something like that) might have a runway that would be long enough, but we would still be in the middle of nowhere. While a Denver EMS crew did board the plan and remove the passenger before the rest of us got off, she did walk off the plan so hopefully it was just some several motions sickness, altitude sickness or something like that. The woman in the seat across from me was traveling with two kids (ages 3 and 2) and appeared to be expecting another. I helped entertain the little girl and watched her while she and her son made a trip to the bathroom. All three of them definitely would not have fit. I guess that is a challenge of traveling with kids.

As I mentioned, my travel season has begun. My travel this year is brutal. Between today and November 1st, I will only be spending 3 full days in the office (I think I have 3 half days thrown in there too). That is about 7 straight weeks of travel. Granted, I do get to spend most weekends at home, but it really makes me realize how quickly the time will go by. Think about this…by the time I am done traveling we will be three days away from electing a new president. And yes, I have taken into consideration that I will be spending a great deal of time in California in October and am preparing myself for the barrage of political ads that will be on the airwaves. That completely blows my mind considering that we have been going at this for about a year and a half now. It will be a tough seven weeks. I love this part of my job because I get the opportunity to really step out and show off Creighton to students and convince them to give us a chance, but it is tough to live out of a suitcase for 7 weeks. I usually have enough time at home to empty out my suitcase and repack again. Neither Matt nor I are telephone talkers so we struggle with communication when I am on the road. It is also hard because most of my travel is to the west coast so I often have events when Matt is home at night available to talk and then by the time I am available he is in bed. I try to not disrupt his schedule too much, so sometimes we just know we can't talk to each other. We do our best. Sometime just short message via email or text message are the best way to stay in contact. We make it through and I think it makes us appreciate when we do get to be together.

Quiet Weekend...

Matt scheduled a softball scrimmage on Friday afternoon so I enjoyed a long workout after work before heading home. After we both got home, we decided to head up to Tanner's for some Keno and good food. I've always enjoyed Tanner's atmosphere, but hated the fact that smoking was still allowed inside because they had Keno. So, even when Omaha went smoke-free, Tanner's was not yet. However, it is now completely smoke-free and I can go again without walking out smelling like an ashtray and feeling like I inhaled a bunch of smoke. Given that we hardly saw each other last week, it was nice to sit around and play quarter Keno and enjoy a great cheeseburger. We also watched the Olympics (men's platform diving) on the big-screen.

Yesterday we headed to the Farmer's Market for a very productive shopping trip. We picked up an eggplant that looks incredible, some frozen tamales, a couple of tomatoes, some homeade salsa, and a new chalkboard to hang right outside of our kitchen. We have been looking for something to hang on the wall below our stairs as it is kind of a random space and not suited for a pictures or anything like that. However, the chalkboard will be perfect in that location.

We spent some time last evening at Lowe's purchasing supplies for a project we will be working on in the coming weeks in our guest room. We had all of the instructions, but still had to wander around looking for all of the supplies. Perhaps someone can explain to me why different wood products are sold in different lengths. We had to purchase 1X2's and 1X3's in 8 foot length pieces, and then two other products we needed in 7ft long pieces and 10 ft long pieces. However the walls we will be using all of the products on are 8 3/4ft long and 10 ft long. Luckily, Matt thinks he can ask the shop teacher at school to cut all of the wood for us as we do not have any sort of saw that will cut it nicely. Hopefully, we can get it cut this week and then work on the project over the long weekend.

Today, we decided to make some pulled pork for sandwiches for this week. We have done this many times before in the slow cooker, but have always covered the pork in BBQ sauce when cooking. We decided this time to cover the pork in root beer when cooking it. We started the pork this morning and let it cook on low all day. I made potato casserole and then pulled the pork, added some BBQ sauce, and enjoyed. It was really good! Matt and I were not really sure what we would think of the root beer, but it provided just a little bit of sweetness and was almost like cooking the pork in a thin molasses. And the best part is that we have pulled pork to eat for the next couple of days.

We enjoyed a quite day at home today. We only left to go work out before lunch. Matt mowed the lawn and I did some laundry, but it was nice to enjoy a quiet day alone. Matt will get busier with softball in the next couple of weeks (he has two tournaments next weekend alone) and then in mid-September I begin traveling, so we are enjoying some time together now.

I'm headed to bed - it is supposed to get into the low 50s overnight so we are planning to turn the AC off and open up the windows!! I love this time of year!

Wonderful

The wonderful smell of homemade banana bread in the oven is filling my house right now. Matt and I had some bananas that had moved beyond the edible point so I whipped up some banana bread for him while he was at the softball coach's meeting tonight. I'm not a huge fan of banana bread, but the smell filling my house right now is pretty incredible. I'm excited to see how the recipe turns out because it is a new one and I was intrigued because it includes plain yogurt. I guess we will know soon how it turns out.

I stayed home from work today. I woke up at about 4am this morning and felt like I was going to be sick. I never actually got sick, but I still wasn't feeling 100% when my alarm went off at 6am. Stephanie is 38 weeks pregnant and we have an agreement in our office that we will not come to work if we are sick, so I called in. The last thing I want to do is give Stephanie the stomach flu or something like that. The good news is I don't think I have the stomach flu, but I still don't know why my stomach was so upset in the middle of the night.

Matt and I spent Friday night watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We decided to enjoy some Chinese food to keep with the theme of the evening and then spent the evening ohhing and ahhing over the opening ceremonies. I'm a huge sucker for the Olympic Games and I usually enjoy the opening ceremonies even though some people find them boring. Friday night's ceremonies did not disappoint. The Chinese put on a wonderful show for the world and it was fantastic to see all of the athletes together for the Olympics again.

As a Olympic junkie I've been pretty attached to the television for the last couple of days. However, a DVR is an Olympic junkie's best friend - as long as you can keep up with watching. The US women's basketball team played during my workout on Saturday morning (beating China handedly) and I tried to stay caught up until I picked up my mom for some shopping on Saturday afternoon. I was in desperate need of a new work shoes - both winter and summer and I managed to find a pair of each at Yonkers on Saturday and only spent $55! I found several items at Pottery Barn I could have purchased on the spot, but held off for the time being.

After shopping I came home, watched a little more of the Olympics and then Matt and I headed to Becky and Dan's for their annual fiesta. It was a little tamer this year that it has in the past and we had a great time chatting with them, Becky's mom and playing with Josie - their chihuhua who was absolutely thrilled with all the people at her house (insert sarcasm here). Poor Josie. Interestingly enough - it was the tamest fiesta I have been to, but apparently the cops paid them a visit after we left. Isn't that how it always goes?

Yesterday, my family attended Flip's memorial service. Flip's wife Kathleen, his daughter Rachael, and sister Phyllis all traveled up from Kentucky for the service and it was nice to see them. Ron's brother Richard also attended and while I've heard many stories about him, I had never met him before. We got the chance to laugh and share stories about Ron and his life. And, as would be fitting, we ended the evening at Pizza King in CB, which was Ron's absolutely favorite. I don't think he ever returned to the area without visiting Pizza King.

Matt and I are currently wtching the US Mens' Gymnastics Team in the team competition. Holy Cow! They totally rocked it on the high bar! I love when the underdog succeeds!

Weekend Recovery...

My houseguests have left and I have finally recovered from the weekend and have time to update. I got up early on Friday morning and headed for some pampering and a pedicure. It was absolutely wonderful. I have extremely ticklish feet and some parts of a pedicure are torture for me, but the scrubber that the girl I go to uses is really gentle and doesn't tickle at all. So, it was an hour of pure relaxation and a great way to start my day. Then I headed to HyVee, grabbed a decaf, non-fat iced caramel macchiato, and picked up all the items I needed for my salad and dessert for Friday night. Well - everything except for a yellow pepper, which looked horrible at HyVee so I had Matt pick one up for me at Target.

I spent all of last week craving chocolate pecan pie (which is strange considering that I had never had chocolate pecan pie before) so I decided to give it a try for dessert of Friday. The recipe for the pie was fairly easy, but I wanted to try making homemade pie crust for the first time. I checked several different recipes before finding one I felt comfortable with and gave it a try. I found it to be easier than I expected and will likely never buy pie crust again. The crust turned out flaky, buttery, and really good - and the filling wasn't bad either. I also made lemon bars and Matt made homemade vanilla ice cream. I was really excited about trying a salad recipe I found with lettuce, red pepper, yellow pepper, onions, artichokes, blue cheese, and a really good viniagrette dressing. It turned out really well and I'll definitely keep it on my list to make again. The artichokes and blue cheese made a really interesting flavor combination.

My mom's birthday party was a big success. It was a fairly small party, just my family, the Hoodys and the Witters. Matt's parents decided to not attend so Matt and his brother came over for a little while, but left before we ate. Brenda got her new fridge delivered about 2.5 hours before everyone was scheduled to arrive. Her old one had slowly been losing the ability to keep cold. Brenda felt that the situation was likely aggravated by the fact that they lost power in the storm in June and the fact that their fridge was over 20 years old. I headed over early to help her set up as her afternoon was a little topsy-turvy. We enjoyed great food (including fabulous bruchetta from a local Italian take-out place that I will be visiting soon!), with great friends. I didn't arrive home until almost midnight!

We got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Farmer's Market with Matt's folks. I don't know what they really thought of it, but I enjoyed it as always. I picked up some fresh sweet basil, fantastic tomatoes, green beans, and we picked up some of the pre-made enchiladas that we love to keep on hand because they are easy to warm up when we don't feel like cooking. We grabbed some breakfast at the Parthenon. I had an elephant ear that was perfect - flaky, sweet, wonderful. I also enjoyed a fantastic cup of homemade root beer.

The farmer's market was really our only excitement during the rest of Matt's parents visit. We cooked them dinner on Saturday night and my parents joined us for dessert. Then we took them to Summer Kitchen Cafe for a great Sunday morning breakfast. They left soon after breakfast and then my mom, Sarah, and I took my grandma to see Momma Mia! It was a cute movie and I think Grandma enjoyed it.

Work has been crazy the past two days. I've received more emails than I can keep up with and I am trying to get everything set for travel this fall. There are just not enough hours in the day. I'm hoping to get completely caught up tomorrow, but I will likely have to shut myself in my office to make that happen.

The start of the weekend...

We had Stephanie's office shower yesterday afternoon at the Twisted Fork. The decor was very eclectic - an industrial ceiling, chandeliers, and animal heads hanging on the walls. Dayo did not make it to the shower because he wasn't feeling well yesterday so Kim told him to stay home and not risk getting Stephanie sick in her final weeks of pregnancy.

We ordered drinks and appetizers to share. The menu is also very ecclectic - we shared fried dill pickel spears, a cheese plate (with goat, sheep and cow cheese, with apples, pepper jam and candied walnuts), and dippin shrimp - which were shrimp in buffalo sauce served with chunky blue cheese dressing. They were served in a martini glass - so much fun!

Kim and Mackenzie both ordered fun drinks. Mackenzie is a big fan of Bloody Marys and Kim got a passion fruit margarita.

Yes, Mackenzie's Bloody Mary was served with a dill pickle spear on top.

We gave Stephanie a Vera Bradley diaper bag. She mentioned at one time to me that she would really like one and I was fairly certain she would not spend the money to buy one for herself.

We had a small scare yesterday because Stephanie did not feel well all Thursday night, and sometimes that can be an early sign of labor. She has had some complications in her pregnancy and her labor will be complicated because she is taking blood thinners that she has to get out of her body before she goes into labor. So, if she is in labor, she needs to know ASAP. But, her sickness disappeared so hopefully it was just a bad reaction to something she ate. We are all excited to meet Alice, but I think Stephanie would like a few more weeks before she makes her appearance.

We shared dessert - a s'mores brownie - which was divine!

Matt and I enjoyed a quite night at home last night, except for a walk we took around our neighborhood once it started to cool off a little bit. We ended up heading to bed early, and I got to sleep in this morning. After heading to the gym for a bit, I took off to do some shopping for Matt's birthday. Sometimes I really struggle with knowing what to get him, and this birthday was defintely one of those times. I wandered around for awhile, managed to figure out a gift for him (a giftcard that I know he will use) and ended up finding a couple of items for our kitchen. We had received a giftcard to Pier One and I usually like to find something special to use a giftcard for and had not found anything spectacular at Pier One in awhile. However, I did today - found glass containers for my kitchen counter to hold flour, sugar, tea, etc. I plan to get them set up tomorrow and will definitely take a picture when I get them set up.

Matt and I watched the Cardinals game tonight - a 5 hour, 14 inning marathon. The Cardinals ended up on top, which is great because they had lost their last five games after sweeping the Padres starting the second half of the season. Hopefully this changes their path for awhile. Chris Carpenter is supposed to get a start this week!!!

Weekend Wrap-up

My mom and I attended the morning session of the swimming trials on Saturday. We watched 10 heats of the Men's 1500 meter. Just so you know, the world record for this event is 14min. 34 seconds - so we spent about 2.5 hours watching swimmers swim back and forth across the pool. Regardless, I loved it. My mom and I ate lunch downtown and then walked around the Old Market for awhile before meeting up with my dad and Matt for the evening session. We were able to see several great races including the finals for the Men's 50 meters. Very exciting.

I got to sleep in on Sunday because there were not morning swimming events which was great because I was up early both Friday and Saturday to get down to the Qwest. Matt and went to work out, watched a little bit of the Cards/Cubs game and then headed downtown for dinner at Jim's before we headed to the final night of the trials. We saw an exciting Women's 50 meter race in which Dara Torres won, set an American record and qualified for her 2nd event in her 5th Olympic games. Amazing! The Peking Acrobats performed after the show - which was incredible to see. It was actually the second time I have seen them as the performed at Truman when I was a student there.

Work has been busy the last couple of days. My email has been fairly out of control lately, I have an event I am planning next week that requires alot of details and a creating a 2 hour presentation from scratch, and I'm trying to prepare for travel this fall. I'm excited to travel again especially because I've already been through it once. It is alot easier to make plans (plane, hotel, car, etc) when I know what I'm getting into.

A distraction from the destruction...

One of the reasons the damage to our house was a little stressful for Matt and I was the fact that we were scheduled to leave Saturday morning for a short trip to Kansas City to see our friends Andrew and Amy and to go the the Cardinals vs. Royals game on Saturday night. After determining that out house was not in any danger of further damage (no ceilings falling in, nothing hanging off the house, etc.) we decided to go ahead and make the trip. We did not get out of town as early as we had planned on Saturday and it took us a little longer to get out of town than we anticipated because there were many traffic lights that were still not working and traffic was backed up. Andrew and Amy were spending the weeknd with Andrew's parents, Charlie and Judy, at their house in Lathrop, MO. We arrived in time for a late lunch at El Guapo, a little, hole-in-the-wall, Mexican restaurant about 10 minutes from their house. We have eaten at El Guapo every time that I have visited Andrew's parents - which is fine with me because the food is really good. After lunch we hung around the house for awhile, Matt and I took a ride in the 1928 Model A Ford that Andrew's dad is restoring, and then headed to KC to the ballpark. We saw a great game - especially since the Cardinals were 0-4 in the series until Saturday night and actually won the game. There is nothing better than an ice cold beer, an order of nachos, a nice evening, and enjoying a great baseball game with good friends. Oh, and seeing Amy almost get into a fight with the really annoying girl who sat two rows in front of us was just the mustard on the hotdog for the evening :)

Here are the four of us enjoying the win!

The game was also a great win because the final score was 5-1 and the one run the Royals scored was scored during the 7th inning, which meant that we could take our ticket stubs to a Sheridan's Custard for a free sundae.

So, we stopped in Liberty on the way home for some hot fudge sundaes.

We spent most of the day Sunday at Andrew's parents house. We enjoyed a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast (yum!), played MarioKart for about 2 hours, and spent some time sitting by the pool after we had lunch. We headed back to Omaha about 4 because we had agreed to help my parents move some furniture.

When we arrived at my parents house, my mom showed us what they had discovered the morning when my dad arrived home from his trip (he was in Kentucky for the weekend) that the rest of us had failed to notice:

This is a fairly major support beam on my parent's deck just barely resting on the concrete block on the ground. All of us, including my almost 88-year-old grandmother had walked around on this deck before my dad noticed this.

Wow!

Updates....

Quite a bit has happened since my last update. First, I started a new job. I'm now working at Creighton University for the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions at an admission counselor and I LOVE IT! Next week, I begin my travel season which will last the entire month of October. I plan on updating this blog throughout my travel season (hopefully - I'm not so great with the updating) so that I can keep all of my readers updated on my whereabouts and adventures. I have included the list below of where I will be and when - let the adventures begin!

September 30th-October 4th - Urbana/Champaign, Chicago and Rock Island, IL
October 7th-October 11th - San Francisco
October 12th-October 19th - Lincoln, Kearney, Seward, and Omaha, NE
October 22nd-October 24th - San Diego
October 25th-October 26th - Honolulu
October 27th-November 1st - Los Angeles

It will be a crazy month, but I am very excited about traveling and talking to students about Creighton and Omaha.

Oh, and Matt and I are buying a house. We put an offer in on one this past weekend and it was accepted. We plan to close on November 9th, so Matt will have alot to do while I am gone to get us ready to move. Maybe it will keep him from missing me too much :)