Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all.  Elizabeth and I are now sitting down to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as we wind down our evening (I got the entire Harry Potter collection for her on Blu-ray for X-mas).  Today we drove back from Omaha where we had been enjoying a Salton family Christmas get-together at Amy & Brandon's place.

We drove out on Friday afternoon in what was pretty bad roads between Ames & Des Moines.  Between the snow packed roads, the rush-hour traffic that we hit, and the increased number of drivers on the road leaving for the holidays, it took us about two and a half hours to get from our house to I-80 westbound with Des Moines in our rear-view mirror.  We were glad when we finally made it out there in what was a much longer trip than it should have been.

Amy made a very nice X-mas meal for us Sunday at noon.  Turkey, homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, Italian salad, dinner rolls, crumb cake, apple pie, and chese cake.  Well, Elizabeth made the salad, and I helped with the crust on the apple pie, but Amy deserves most of the credit.  She also made a Russian cream (like a custard), and homemade whipped cream.  That was just Sunday.  She also made a big pot of oyster stew, and we ordered Godfather's pizza another day.  All in all, there was too much to eat :)
How about that lattice crust topping?

Of course we played a lot of games (Telestrations, trivial pursuit, cards).  One game was especially worse than others.  We played a drinking game version of hearts, and it wasn't with alcohol.  Eben & Lynn had bought a few absolutely disgusting varieties of soda at a store in Minnesota.  They gave them to us as a gift, so we all decided to try them.  The soda flavors were Sweet Corn, Bacon, and Buffalo wing sause.  I think that the Sweet Corn was the worst.  It had a very strong smell and tasted like bad butter. 
Yuck.

Another thing to note is that Lynn just had her right knee replaced on the 11th of this month.  She is doing well, but her knee is still pretty stiff and it will take a while to get all of her strength and motion back.  On a couple of different occasions I worked with her and gave her some physical therapy exercises. 

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

Today Elizabeth and I enjoyed a fun afternoon down in Des Moines.  We met up with our buddy Erick Ude for lunch at Exile Brewing Company.  It was a cozy little restraunt / brewery, and I enjoyed a burger while Elizabeth chose their chicken fingers basket.  After lunch we headed over to Wells Fargo Arena to watch a basketball doubleheader, the inaugural Big Four Classic.  It was fun to be able to watch all four major college basketball teams in the state, but in general I have mixed feelings about this.  It's really too bad that Iowa State will not be able to play both UNI and Drake each year like they had in the past, and it's too bad that these games will not be played home/away on the school campuses like before.

The first game was UNI vs Iowa, and the second was Drake vs. ISU.
A view of the action between the Panthers and Hawkeyes.  The three of us were cheering on UNI for this game.
Panoramic view of Wells Fargo (and Elizabeth).
Unfortunately, the Hawkeyes were able to make their free throws down the stretch.  They went on to win 80-73.
Tip-off between Iowa State and Drake.
Brian and Elizabeth at Wells Fargo Arena.  ISU defeated Drake 86-77.

Both games were very competative, but it was kind of a long and exhausting day for sure.  Elizabeth did a good job of putting up with two entire basketball games!  Not a lot of the crowd actually stayed for both games, so it was odd that the place seemed maybe 3/4 full despite most of the tickets being sold.  A lot of the ISU and Drake fans did not show up until their game, and it seemed like a lot of Hawkeye fans did not stay to watch the second game.  ISU had a couple of nice dunks in this one... one by Melvin Ejim as he drove baseline, and the other by Will Clyburn.  Clyburn's was the most memorable (agreed upon by Elizabeth).  Drake had just rebounded a missed shot by Iowa State, but they threw a very poor outlet pass which was stolen by Clyburn underneath the ISU basket.  He threw down a two-handed dunk as he was fouled.  Ejim (21 points/11 rebounds) and Clyburn (17 and 10) both tallied double-doubles for Iowa State.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

I just got back from Hilton Coliseum where David and I watched Iowa State take down Nebraska-Omaha by a score of 93-65.  It wasn't the most entertaining game, but it's always fun to see the Cyclones win. 

Tip-off between the Cyclones and Mavericks
Halftime score: 52-28.
Iowa State wins!

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

The view of our backyard.


We officially have our first SNOWFALL of the winter!  I'm sure that it won't amount to much, but it's something to note.

I'm also excited to be going down to Memphis at the end of the month to watch ISU play in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl against the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes.  I'm not overly excited about playing Tulsa since we've already played them once this year, but it will be fun to watch my Cyclones play football again this year. 

Of course this all depends on the world not abruptly ending in 13 days like a few idiots think will... just because it's the end of the Mayan calander on 12/21/12 people are freaking out. 

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Saturday, December 1st, 2012

Elizabeth and I just got back a little while ago from Marshalltown where we went bowling for my work Christmas party.  It wasn't your regular night of bowling.  During our first game we bowled normally, but in our second and third games we had to bowl with a specific style for each frame.  Opposite handed, pushing the ball with a pool stick, with something over our head to we are blindfolded, granny-style, etc.  I actually only had strikes a few times that I bowled silly... my only attempt blindfolded I threw a strike.  Also I had strikes when using the pool cue and when throwing "as hard as I can".  No strikes when I tried to bowl normally. 

The other highlight of today was taking Elizabeth to watch the ISU men's basketball team defeat BYU, 83-62.  Will Clyburn was the star of the game for Iowa State, scoring a career-high 32 points. 

Outside of Hilton Coliseum
Today's game was "Color it Cardinal", and the Cyclones wore red instead of their usual home white.  Later on this play there was an amazing alley-op pass that Clyburn dunked over a BYU defender. 
Halftime score 48-37 Iowa State leading. 
Cyclones win again!

 
I was able to shave this past week once our donation quota was met at work.  Here I am before shaving...
Mustache!!  Ok, I looked like a pedophile.

One other thing that I will remember about today's basketball game was the large number of BYU fans that made the trip over here to watch the game.  It seemed like there was one whole section that was filled up with the visiting team's fans.  I'm guessing that they had a couple charter busses or something.  At least they all got to be disappointed in the end :)