An Iowa Wedding: The Bachelorette Party

The bachelorette party was a day-long adventure that started out with cake and cocktails at the Barefoot Bar, then progressed to a day of meandering down the lakes in a pontoon boat stuffed full of twenty-something ladies, bottles of booze, and various “gifts” that will not be shown in pictures on this blog due to their lascivious nature.  But they were responsible ladies, and had the foresight to pay the boat rental place to supply them with a driver for the boat.

Meet Tyler.

Tyler is 19 years old.  He was also the lucky employee of the boat rental place who got chosen to drive our boat.  He was pretty happy with this outcome.  

This picture is where we returned to the boat rental place and he had to "show off" his good luck to all his male co-workers.  Thinly disguised as having one of them take a group photo.  

During the boat float we did the usual: jump on giant trampolines in the water until the homeowners came out and shooed us off, stop at Arnold's Park for a quick roller-coaster ride, dance while wearing stick-on mustaches (yes, that's what Tyler's wearing in the first photo), and attempt to learn how to get back in the boat without a working ladder.  After the boating was more bars, and outdoor concert, and a surprise appearance from a pirate (okay, he was actually a Captain Morgan sales guy, but he did give out free hats to everyone at the bar).  

All in all, a successful party to celebrate the impending end of A-Star's single days.

Friday Night Fever

This is what a rockin' Friday night looks like at our house.  The picture is actually from about a month ago, but it's not like we've changed our weekend habits.

You better get prepared if you want to hang with us, because we sure bring the party on!

In memory of a wonderful grandmother

This is my favorite photo of my Grandma, and the one that I will always remember her by.

In my memory, Grandma Fern was always this person: smiling on the porch steps, standing in the warm dappled sunlight of a Michigan summer.  She was the grandmother who was always happy to see you, who would give you hugs and kisses and send homemade fudge at Christmastime.  She would patiently play cards with pre-teen adolescents as if it were the one thing she wanted to do most in the world.  She let us eat sugar cereals and always, always, sent cards on our birthdays.

Love you always, Grandma.  XOXO

Warrior Dash-ed

So at the beginning of May, Chris and I participated in the Warrior Dash, along with some good friends of ours. To put it mildly, none of us had really spent much time on those things that people typically do before running a race, like "training" and "eating healthy" or even "stretching."  Except Payson's wife, who happened to do all three.  We had a friendly bet amongst the four of us.  It was girls against boys, and whoever lost had to cook a fancy dinner for the other two.  The winners got to dictate the menu.  Now, who won the bet?  Read on...

But first note that I learned a valuable lesson that race day, and it was this:

When jumping off the hood of an old rusty car onto a pile of tires, be careful to land properly so that you don't blow out your knee.

Here's the breakdown of how the race went.

You check in, get assigned your numbers and your tracking button, and prepare.

Costumes are encouraged, as you can see from Frack and Payson's outfits.  Although someone probably should have warned the guy on the far left in the background there -- kilts are acceptable, as a type of Braveheart-esque warrior gear.  But if you don't have a kilt in your closet, and you are a dude, then don't think that just any skirt will do.  You will look like you should be featured on the People of Walmart website, not wielding an ax on the battlefield with blue warpaint on.

Next, you stand at the starting line and pretend that you don't know the crazy looking guy with the afro wig and painted-on mustache who claims to be married to you.

After the starting gun goes off, you race for about 1.2 miles before you hit the first obstacle.  After a while, the boys fall a bit behind the girls.  You take a moment to photograph the racers behind you, so that later you can go nah-nah-nah-bo-bo.  If you look really, really, closely at this photo, you can just see a faint red blob at the very back of the photo.  That is the boys.

You approach Obstacle #1.  You are feeling cocky and self-assured.  You are master of the junkyard cars.

Epic FAIL.  You find yourself suddenly with a lot of time on your hands to take pictures, because in your haste to jump off the cars you landed funny on an old tire and hyperextended your knee.  You wave off the EMT and try to look brave.

The boys have now caught up.

After a while, your knee feels better enough that you can walk.  You can't run or jog or climb things, but you can walk - slowly and carefully.  And gosh darn it YOU ARE GOING TO FINISH THE RACE!  Because you can walk without limping (right now), you get lots of funny looks like people think you are just being a wimp.  When really the slightest wrong movement makes it feel like your kneecap wants to slide off your leg and you would go down like a lead balloon.  (That picture, by the way, is as close as Phoenix gets to a "river run").

And then comes the second-to-last obstacle, the part where you are supposed to leap over a burning flame.  Twice.

You take a moment to contemplate how you are going to leap over the flames when you can't get a running start and you only have one workable leg with which to push off and land.  In the meantime, the people on the sidelines are cheering you on, not understanding the reason behind your hesitation.

But by golly YOU ARE GOING TO LEAP OVER THE BURNING FLAME.  TWICE.

Although the second time doesn't go so well and your knee buckles as you land and you almost fall down (but don't!) although the organizers offer you EMT assistance and you can hear someone in the crowd wonder, "what is wrong with her?"

However, now your knee is really smarting and you are supposed to get down on all fours (yes, that's right -- your hands and knees) and crawl through the mud.

You crawl through the mud.  Some what awkwardly, of course.

THANK GOD.  It's the finish line.

Then it's time for the "warrior showers."

After which you get to redeem your race button for a nice cold beer and relax and listen to some music.  Assuming, of course, that you brought a change of clothes so you aren't completely muddy and/or soaked.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Warrior Dash.

A special thanks goes to:

Payson's wife, for being an encouraging team mate even though I crapped out less than halfway through the race;

Frack, for being a good husband and staying by my side for the remainder of the race;

and Payson, for agreeing with Frack that the boys would pay up on our friendly bet even though there was no clear winner due to my injury.

Next year, however, I'm going to train beforehand.  And be a little more careful on the obstacles.

 (Note: this is not the size of the free beer.  This right here is a $20 beer.  Although you get to keep the mug.)

You can't take the country out

My husband, for those who don't know, grew up in Iowa.  He grew up on a  farm (really!) growing corn and hogs and plus this one lady wrote a great book about their library cat.

And also, in case you didn't know, my husband has a twin brother.

My husband and his twin, Frick and Frack to you, have been farming corn since they were knee high to a grasshopper, or something like that:

 

But now we live in southern California.  And Frick has come out to live in California, too.

So what did these two boys do?

They planted corn in our backyard with a tractor that's what.

It just goes to show -- you can take the boys out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boys.

Make a baby with anyone!

I was surfing the internet recently when I came across this advertisement:



But as bad as that one is, it’s not as creepy as the ads I saw when I was checking my Facebook account:



Thanks, Facebook, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to make a baby with “anyone.” Especially if it means I end up with that alien-looking baby.

...Or one that takes the nickname “chipmunk cheeks” to a whole new level:



So of course, I had to try it out. You know, see what my future (way, way future) babies with Chris will look like. Thankfully, according to the indisbutible science of the interwebs, our future babies will actually turn out kinda cute:

The Best Time for Home Renovation

My husband has a twin brother, we call him Frick.  Together, they are Frick and Frack.



I have heard stories about what they were like as children.  I won't go into detail, but let's just say the phrase "double trouble" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Anyway, Frack's brother Frick (he's the one in the pink shirt... ahh hahaha) had a baby with his lovely lady, Yvonne, on the 31st.  (Yvonne is not her real name.  I don't think people are even named Yvonne anymore.)

Frick was also in the process of completing a home renovation.  With a pregnant Yvonne.  It was four days to baby, and the bedroom and the future baby's room needed paint, sanding, staining, varnishing, and trim.  And of course there were baby clothes to wash, bottles to sanitize, and hospital bags to pack.  There were sanders and saws going nonstop, family and friends running here and there, and dust covering every inch.  Furniture needed cleaning and arranging once the renovations were complete.  We decided that "Saint Yvonne" was a more apt title, as she sat calmly downstairs, away from the dust but still somehow in the midst of noise and chaos.

"How do you put up with all this?"  we asked her.
"Well," she replied, "I already tried yelling and that didn't work."

But before we knew it, there was a new precious little addition to the fam:



And, thanks to the hard work, dedication, and help of family and friends, Saint Yvonne and Brick (that's Baby Frick to you) came home from the hospital to a sparkling clean, fully-renovated house.  Completed just in the Frick... uh, I mean nick of time.

In Which we are not Smarter than a Coffeepot

Apparently my brother's coffee pot has "intelligent design."  I say this not because it is a special super-fancy coffee pot with lots of features, but because it outsmarted both myself and my husband.

It is in fact a pretty standard coffee pot, the only exception being that it is made by a different company than the one that made my coffee pot at home.  I stood in my brother's kitchen this morning, peering closely at the coffee pot, trying to figure out how to open the little compartment that you put the coffee grounds in.  After five minutes or so, Chris came over.  He couldn't figure it out either.

I gave up.  I figured if the coffee pot had outsmarted me, then I didn't deserve to have coffee that morning anyway.

My dad went over to have a crack at it, and of course figured out how to open the compartment within about 30 seconds.  At least Chris couldn't make fun of me, because he hadn't gotten the coffee pot open either.

Although when it came time to pour the coffee, I discovered its design maybe wasn't so intelligent.  In fact, it seemed to have the exact same design as every coffee pot I've ever encountered: leaky.  I don't understand why, but it is almost impossible to pour a cup of coffee from any coffee pot without losing a little to the countertop:



P.S.  Can you guess what company employs my brother?  Here's a hint: that's his coffee mug on the left.

Christmas in Kansas

On Sunday, we flew in to Manhattan (Kansas).  This is Chris's first visit to the city where I grew up, so I have big plans to show him all the sights.  So far we have seen the Kansas River:



We also saw the mall, downtown (all 4 blocks of it), and some of the new developments (we've now got a Bed Bath and Beyond, and a Best Buy).  Mostly, we have been hanging out with family and relaxing.

We did some Christmas shopping at the mall:



And even got to see Santa while we were there.  What is it about Santa that seems to be universally intimidating to young kids?



I also took a trip to the local supermarket chain, Dillons.  Since we were buying a turkey, and having a Dillons card would save me about $8.00, I decided to sign myself up.  Even though I'll be here a total of 4 days and then never use it again.  Oh well, I'll just add it to my collection, I thought to myself.

As it turns out, the next day my sister-in-law and I had to run to the store again to get ingredients for Eggnog.  Actually, we had to run to three stores.  My sister-in-law was going all out, and she was making eggnog from scratch.  So we went to the Hy-Vee (Store #1).  The Hy-Vee had eggs, but they were out of heavy cream.  We stood there, looking sadly at the refrigerated display.  A lady standing next to us asked what we were making.  We told her, and her response was, "From scratch?  You know they sell that stuff pre-made?"

Pbbft.  Not as fun.  So we were off to Store #2, the Liquor Store (because FYI -- in Kansas you cannot buy liquor at the grocery store).  Liquor has its own special store, just to make sure you really have to go out of your way.

And then our eggnog-making trip was almost complete... we just needed some heavy cream.  So we went to the Dillons (Store #3).  As we were at the self-checkout paying for our heavy cream, I began digging around in my purse for the Dillons card.  The attendant approached us.

Attendant:  "Can I help you ladies?"
Me:  "Oh, I can't seem to find my Dillons card."
Attendant:  "Did you try putting in an alternate ID?  Your phone number?"
Me:  "Yeah, but it didn't recognize it.  I just got my card yesterday, so it's probably not in the system yet."
Attendant:  "Wait, you got your card yesterday, and you can't find it?"
Me:  "Um, yes."
Attendant:  "You're serious?  You just got it yesterday and you lost it already?"
Me:  "Yeah, what's your point?"

The Giving of Thanks

Ever since I was a kid, I made it a point to frequently remind myself of the blessings in my life.  I have a very clear memory of myself at eleven, sitting in my bedroom and mentally ticking off all the things I was thankful for.  And it wasn't even Thanksgiving.

I've continued the tradition throughout my twenties.  In college, I once spent several months being bummed over a particularly painful breakup.  At the same time, I had to deal with the aftermath of an auto accident that put my car in a rather shady auto shop being "repaired" for over six weeks.  I had to walk everywhere.  In the wintertime.  And it was finals.  To combat my blues, I made a list of all the things that I did have to be thankful for, and carried it around with me everywhere.  It helped to put a little perspective on the whole thing, like when I found out my car was going to be yet another week in the shop because, ahem, apparently some rats got to the sun visor when it was being stored in the back of their shop.  Not kidding.  Rats.  So, without further ado... My list.  (And I do so looove making lists).

I AM THANKFUL FOR:

My Husband.  (What kind of wife would I be if I didn't list him first?)

My Family.  Mom, Dad, Brother, Brother's Wife and Little Evyl (who is the sweetest little thing EVER).

My Family-by-marriage.  Chris's family is so cool.

My Friends.  I feel honored to know people who truly care about me.

My Job.  It may not be my dream job, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either.  And one should be especially thankful in this economy.

Of course, all the old standbys still apply: clean water, food on the table, money in my pocket, a roof over my head, and clothes to keep me warm.  And let's not forget the luxuries:  hot showers, chocolate-chip cookies, and movies-on-demand.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!