Beds

Over the past six-years that we've lived together, we've progressed from a double bed to a queen bed to our current and close-to-forever bed; the king bed.

When I'd tell people we both slept well in these smaller beds, people couldn't believe it since Steve is not what you'd call petite.

Lucky for me Steve doesn't snore, and he sleeps "coffin style". He sleeps on his back with his hands peacefully crossed on his stomach. He stays that way the entire five hours he actually sleeps.

Additionally, he sleeps on top of the sheet and blanket which creates a hill I'm not able to roll up at night.

Steve has also kindly banished me and my pillows to sleeping with my head in the middle of my side of the bed to apparently protect the two lamps at the head of our bed from being knocked over.

I appreciate a guy who doesn't mind the occassional middle of the night gut punch at the expense of saving our $20 Target lamps.

My Big Redneck Wedding

My dad flew into KC yesterday after spending a week in sunny Florida visiting my grandparents. So last night we were all at Steve/Ann's house.

There's a show on CMT that we discovered last night called "My Big Redneck Wedding" .

None of us have watched this station before so I'm not sure what exactly captured Steve's attention while flipping around to make him stop on this. It may have been the 100% camo wedding of two 18-year old teenagers and the pink wedding rifle that initially caught his attention. Notice her camo veil.


And next we enjoyed the wedding with the topless engagement photos on a horse and the minister who got ordained in prison.


The last episode featured "cow pies" instead of cake for the guests. A classy alternative.


My dad did comment that if he had seen this show two years ago he could have saved a lot of money on our wedding! And being the go-with-the-flow type of guy Steve is, he would have showed up for any of the above scenerios; especially the one that decorated the ceremony with smashed beer cans.

FURminator

Okay, this may be my favorite gift we've given of all time. I believe the FURminator could very well significantly change Steve and Ann's lives.

Well over a year ago, I was at a radio recording session for work. The producer was telling me about how terribly her dog sheds (No, I really don't know this person). Anyway, she mentioned she purchased this pricey scraper looking thing called the FURminator. She stated she now has virtually no fur on her couch.


Steve and Ann have the cutest little cat named Violet. Violet and her brother, Leroy, were found as kittens on my grandparent's farm in Iowa. My grandpa claimed the kittens did not shed, and they came to KC to live the city life. Sadly Leroy has passed away, but "non shedding" Violet sheds enough for five cats.

So...I told Ann about the FURminator immediately. She's been looking for it ever since. At Jazzercise last weekend the instructor mentioned she was looking for the FURminator for her dog, and a woman replied they have them at a store that happens to be two blocks from our house! Obviously I purchased it immediately knowing Ann would love this as part of her birthday present.

We did a little test run on Violet last night, and initially the product seems to live up to its price. We sadly don't have any pets due to that swollen eye/closed throat thing Steve annoyingly gets around cats. But others may benefit! If nothing else the after photos on the website are quite amazing if not a little disgusting to look at.

Yes it's true...

It's Ann's birthday!

Here's to the happiest of birthdays for our sister-in-law, Ann! She's an unbelievable sister-in-law and friend to both of us.

We celebrated Ann's birthday with the entire KC fam (plus my mom) at Cactus Grill!

Damn Keys!

My mom is spending this week with us. She's going back and forth between Steve/Ann and our house at night.

Last night she stayed with us. This morning as I was pulling out of the garage, I saw her in my rear view mirror standing out in the freezing cold with keys and contents of her purse spread everywhere!

She informed me she was looking for the keys to Steve/Ann's car that she was driving.

In her purse we found:
- Her set of keys for my parent's car
- My dad's set of keys for my parent's car
- The key to our house
But no keys to Steve/Ann's car.
We headed back in the house and found the correct car keys. All was good.

Later in the morning I picked up my office phone to hear my mom's voice. This time she had accidentally locked her purse that included the key to our house and her cell phone inside our house. And most importantly locked in our house was her ID that she needed in order for Nate's daycare to let her pick him up at 11:30a!

Somehow she had the keys to Steve/Ann's house in her hands. So she drove to their house, found Ann's address book and found my work number.

It only took two stressful phone calls for it to click in me that Steve/Ann have an extra set of our house keys. So again all was good.

But it goes without saying my mom has been stripped of all car and house keys until further notice. :)

Our Friday Night

Last night Steve and I watched both SURVIVORMAN and Bring It On II (I like to believe Steve has a secret love of my ABC Family high school cheerleader movies).

We watched the shows, but we didn't have the sound on. Instead we were listening to our IPod.

I'll just say if you've never seen Survivorman kill an animal while hearing the music of Sarah McLachlan in the background or watched a high school cheerleading competition to the positive tunes of Guns N' Roses I highly recommend it.

Family

Last night after work Steve was in the mood to go to 75th Street Brewery in Waldo.

We asked Steve & Ann if they wanted to meet us there. And before we knew it, we saw Nate's grin from around the corner of our booth.

There's no other point to this post except to say we're lucky to be so close to each other (proximity-wise and relationship-wise).

There's nothing like family.

Babies, Baby & Baby

We've had a lot of adorable babies join our clan of friends recently!

In late November our friends Thomas and Julia here in KC welcomed their twins Caroline and Joseph.


Our friends Matt and Angie from Champaign, IL brought in New Year's Day with the birth of their son Alex.


And on Sunday our friends Chad and Sara from Green Bay, WI celebrated the birth of their son Miles.


More babies are on the way over the next couple of months (including a new niece or nephew)...and then again a few months after that!

Tiles

On Sunday night around 9:00 p.m., I was thinking about jumping in the shower and winding down.

But not Steve. Steve decided 9:00 p.m. was the ideal time to start destructing part of our living room!

He disappeared and then reappeared with his chisel and started pounding away on the 80-year old tile in front of our fireplace.


The process was quiet and dust particles did not fill the room I had recently cleaned. Or it was quite the opposite.

Like all destruction that Steve's in charge of, it was quick.

Why do I have a feeling putting in new tiles (that we have not found or purchased) will not be as quick?

And the lights came down...

As I decorated the inside of our house in December for Christmas, Steve went to work outside and put up big clear lights. Simple, pretty and festive.

On January 1, there were no mentions left of Christmas inside our house. That day, I asked Steve when he was going to take down the lights. He said, "Not yet."

When the second week of January arrived, and all of the residential lights on our street had disappeared except for our house and across the street, I asked Steve the question again. His response this time was, "Scott and I decided we aren't going to take our lights down until the Brookside Christmas tree comes down."

Our house and our neighbor's house were quickly turning from festive to gawdy Griswold. And I knew the guys would stay true to their words. So every night as I turned down our street, I glanced the other way down the street to check if the Brookside Christmas tree was still lit.

And every night it was still lit.

Finally on Thursday night the Brookside Christmas tree became a regular tree again! And, just like that, Steve immediately took down our lights. And then our neighbors took down their lights. And our neighborhood again likes us!

Shades

I keep a bag of fun things for our nephews to play with at our house (you know the basics like maracas, a pink dog w/ pink leash, wrist sweatbands...).

On Tuesday night after dumping out the bag, Nate apparently decided to go for the gangsta/rapper look.

Steve walked in...
Steve looked at Nate...
Steve turned to me...
Steve then said to me in that low voice he gets when talking seriously...

"Why is Nate wearing my good sunglasses?"

Steve has been known to walk into his high school prom wearing sunglasses with his tux, and he does like that song "I Wear My Sunglasses At Night". He obviously likes his shades. That must be why he wears them so infrequently. They are his "good sunglasses"!

Surprise!

After the couples baby shower, we headed to the Crossroads for a surprise birthday party at The Cashew for our friend Allison!

Allison's fiance, Kevin, pulled together this surprise. And although the surprise had already occured when we arrived, we could tell she was still very surprised!

I have never known a couple who successfully surprises each other more often on a regular basis. Almost every time I see them together (or am invited to see them together), it's a surprise for the other person.

Sometimes it's Allison doing the surprising and sometimes it's Kevin. But it happens a lot. In fact, they've even figured out how to surprise the other person when they both are planning the same event! They're quite amazing like that.

I'm looking forward to seeing what surprises are in store at their wedding!

Couples Baby Showers

On Saturday night we celebrated the upcoming birth of our friends John and Jolyn's baby at a couples baby shower.

The first couples baby shower Steve attended he ate flowers out of the centerpieces. The Hacke twins are now three, but time has not faded this memory for anyone.

Steve didn't eat any decor, but at this couples baby shower, Steve made plans to go to a Ducks Unlimited banquet overnight on Feb. 9 with our friend Mark. That's all fine and good except that Feb. 9 is the next couples baby shower we are attending - for Mark and Barb!

Needless to say, Steve and Mark will not be hanging out in Albany, Mo. on Feb. 9 celebrating the upcoming birth of Mark and Barb's baby by winning another camouflage cooler. Although I believe I just thought of an additional gift for the baby and her bottles...

Leaves

Yesterday in KC was like early October. It was sunny, warm and all of our snow melted. Hidden under this snow were leaves. Not just our leaves. But leaves from our neighbor to the south, and his neighbor and their neighbor. While probably only partially true, it's like everyone's trees to the south of our house decided to blow their leaves to our yard and then stop.

Our neighbors to the north were raking (their own tidy leaves), so I thought we should, too. I started raking and Steve starting blowing leaves. Since our two empty leaf bags from last fall quickly filled, I went to the neighborhood hardware store to pick up more leaf bags and an additional rake.

At the hardware store I walked through every aisle looking for a rake. Then I walked through every aisle again. I finally found an employee and he told me that it's January so they have snow shovels.

But yet they have tons of leaf bags.

When I got home with the leaf bags, I asked Steve if we could build a barrier to keep other people's leaves out of our yard. He suggested we store our 12 full leaf bags that won't be picked up until next fall there. He's always thinking.

Cafe Sebastienne

Friday night we celebrated Christmas with our friends Jack and Beverly.

After the opening of presents for people and cats,

we headed over to Cafe Sebastienne at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art for excellent food, to-die-for martinis, great company and, as you can see, lots of artwork!

Hawkeye State!

I recently saw a poll (maybe in USA Today) of U.S. citizens that ranked Iowa as the third hardest state to locate or recognize when looking at a map.

First of all, c'mon! It's pretty much a square in the middle of the country.

Maybe people can't find Iowa on the map, but they've sure been hearing a lot about Iowa. Lately this unfairly stereotyped state that I love has been the Hollywood of politics. To say the media has been paying a little bit of attention to this great state is an understatement.

But as my dad said during Christmas, as we were in the car listening to a trillion political ads in a row, Iowa will soon be forgotten for another four years.

That's sad, because it's a great place. And for all of the campaign ads, political calls and everything else Iowans have been barraged with the past year, they deserve a little love!

And so it begins...

Cheers to the new year!


And to all things (like ice to a 2-year old) that bring you joy!