Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

I just got back from another fun men's basketball game at Hilton Coliseum where I saw the Cyclones defeat Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 80-50.  What made this game especially enjoyable for me was the fact that I was able to move up to the second row from the court in section 134!  My friend Jeremy Seago messaged me after the game started that he had an extra ticket, so I moved on down to sit with him.  They were his boss's seated, and boy were they good ones!

I took a few videos just to show off how awesome our seats were:

As for the game, the Cyclones were in control the entire way, and five players scored in double figures: DeAndre Kane (15), Matt Thomas (13), Dustin Hogue (13), Georges Niang (12), and Monte Morris (11). 

Here is the view from my regular seats at tip-off...

...and here is the view from the upgraded seats!!

The band was right next to us.

Cyclones win big!

Sunday, November 10th, 2013

Happy 17 weeks to Nolan!

This was a busy and fun homecoming weekend for us.  Brandon & Amy stopped by to share in the fun... We played quite a bit of Settlers of Catan, Cards Against Humanity, and we went to a volleyball game.  During the volleyball game on Saturday, Iowa State played very well and was able to sweep the Oklahoma Sooners in three sets: 25-14, 25-22, 26-24.  Then today I met up with Jeremy Seago for the first Cyclone basketball game of the season!  I have really been looking forward to basketball season quite a bit, especially with football season being a disaster.

Sophomore Naz Long was very impressive in Iowa State's season opening win over the University of North Carolina Wilmington Seahawks.  Long led the Cyclones with 26 points, including 8 for 11 from three point range.  He was one of five Cyclones in double figures along with Georges Niang (16), DeAndre Kane (13), Matt Thomas (10), and Dustin Hogue (10).  With all of the offensive firepower that we lost from last year's team, I was afraid that this year Iowa State would not be able to keep up the pace from long-range.  Hopefully I am wrong about that, especially since the Cyclones combined for 15 threes in the game today.

Nolan was enjoying pulling mommy's hair a little too much...

Sunday, October 27th, 2013

Happy 15 week birthday to Nolan!  Our little guys is getting so big now!  105 days old :)

This weekend his Grandma Becky came down to watch him.  She was nice enough to take care of him for most of the day yesterday while Elizabeth and I went tailgating for the football gave vs Oklahoma State.  Sara and Mike were in town visiting from Chicago, and Erick Ude also came up to tailgate and stay with us.  I was the only one of our group that ended up going into the game (which was close for the first half but ended up being a blowout loss for Iowa State).  After the game we went out to OddFellow's for some burgers.  I ordered the grilled cheese burger (a double bacon cheese burger with grilled cheese sandwiches in place of buns) again. 

I did manage to catch a couple of highlight plays for Iowa State during the game.  The first was a 22 yard touchdown reception for Quenton Bundrage in the first quarter, and the next was a 11 yard touchdown run on an option play for DeVondrick Nealy. 

Monday, October 14th, 2013

Happy 3-month birthday (a quarter of a year) to our little boy!  I can't believe how fast it has gone!  You make mommy & daddy very proud Nolan :)

Yesterday we took him to d&orfs photography to have his 3-month pictures taken.  Check out how photogenic he is!!

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013

As of Monday this week Nolan has started going to day care while mommy & daddy go to work.  Since he's been such a good boy at day care, we decided to take him to Hilton Coliseum today for his first official Cyclone sporting event.  Nolan turned out to be a good luck charm, because the Iowa State volleyball team won in straight sets over Kansas State, 26-24, 25-19, and 25-18!  Not only that, but I ended up winning a small prize package at the game.  It was "80's night", and at one point in the game they announced that the first person to show Cy a driver's license of a person born in the 80s would win.  Just before then we had noticed that Cy was walking by our section, and we had gotten up to take a picture with him... and since we happened to be right beside him it was easy to show my I.D. and win.  I ended up winning a t-shirt, water bottle, and a small toy volleyball :)

Here we are posing with Cy after I won the prize package.

Nolan with the toy volleyball that we won :)

It looks like he's enjoying himself at the game!

A shot of the action...

Go State!

We also ran into Cy before the game started and got a picture... Nolan's first picture with Cy!

Aww, and this picture was on Monday right when Elizabeth had to drop Nolan off for his first day of daycare.  Mommy is looking sad :(

Saturday, October 5th, 2013

Right now I'm watching Nolan while Elizabeth gets a well deserved nap, and since I managed to get our little guy to fall asleep too I thought it would be a good time to blog...

From talking to some family earlier today it sounds like some strong winds and a tornado did quite a bit of damage from back home yesterday.  It sounds like people were pretty lucky in the fact that nobody was hurt, and everyone's houses were sparred.  Still there was some property damage throughout the area.  Chris & Marcia had the roof torn off of their barn, an old windmill was destroyed, and a silo fell down.  A cattle barn of Paul Salton's about a mile and a half west from my parent's place was totaled.  It sounds like there was only minor damage done on my parent's farm... large tree branches, fencing, and a small shed in a horse lot was destroyed. 

Here you can see the roof which was torn from Chris & Marcia's barn.

The Iowa State football team "lost" a heartbreaking game to Texas this past Thursday.  I will remember the game for what should have been called a fumble at the goal line when Jeremiah George stripped the ball away from the Texas running back and took off for what would have been an ISU touchdown.  Instead the refs got it wrong, a couple plays later Texas scored, and that was the game.  So frustrating...

Today for lunch we went to a local restaurant, Wallaby's. I had actually never been there before, but it was a pretty comfortable sports bar and grill.  I enjoyed a breaded pork tenderloin while Elizabeth had a Turkey melt and sweet potato fries. 

Nolan has the strength to stand if you hold him to keep him balanced.

Tuesday, October 1st, 2013

Well Elizabeth and I have had enough stress lately with our "daycare provider".  Pay attention to the quotation marks there. 

So for some background information, we had signed up to have a lady that runs an in-home daycare which is really close by where we live (like less than 2 blocks) take care of Nolan.  We had signed up for this about 8 months ago.  I guess in retrospect we signed up for daycare at this place mostly because of its convenient location.  We should have done a little more background checking...

Fast forward to yesterday.  Elizabeth checks the mail and it turns out we got a letter form our daycare provider WHO WAS SCHEDULED TO START WITH NOLAN IN ONE WEEK.  It turns out that she is cancelling our daycare because she "had help quit and will not have as many children".  She goes on to say that she cannot pay to add another employee because it would be too much stress on her family.  This letter appeared to be a form letter, it had multiple grammatical errors, and it seemed to contradict conversations that she had with Elizabeth only last week.

Wow.  Where to start with this. I should probably note that she had contacted us before Nolan was born to try and have us sell Yankee Candles for her as a fundraiser.  We did not participate in this because 1) it's kind of weird for in-home daycare to make parents do fundraisers, and 2) we don't want to peddle candles to all of our friends and family.  According to her facebook page, she has an upcoming fundraiser of selling pasta as well. 

Elizabeth had been in contact with her throughout last week trying to iron out a few details.  I should probably mention that her name is Terri Bogenrief.  So in messaging back and forth with her she mentioned that she was recently upgraded to a QRS rating of 3 and would be charging us a little more.  Whatever.  So at that time it seemed like she was still planning on working for us, and she was even "upgrading".  Apparently she is taking less children instead.  

The worst part of it is the very small amount of time that she gives us to find a replacement.  The letter she mailed was sent last Friday, and we didn't receive it until Monday.  Those are a few extra days that would have been nice to search for a replacement!  She could have called, or texted, or emailed.  Nope.  Now before when we had lined up our service with her she made it clear to us that if we would have for some reason wanted to cancel our daycare and go with another place that we were to call her right away or contact her immediately.  Apparently she does not offer the same courtesy. 

I honestly don't even think that she had any help quit like she claims.  My theory is that for some reason she just wanted to back out of caring for Nolan (probably because we weren't exactly wanting to do her stupid fundraisers), so she sends us this form letter in the mail and says that is that.  She proceeded to un-friend us on Facebook immediately so that we could not contact her or write our story on her wall.  Elizabeth has tried to text her but has received no response.

I have a hard time getting over how unprofessional this lady has been, and how ridiculous it is to cancel a daycare service with a week to go.  Especially when doing so via letter when she could have done so quicker in so many other ways (walk over since she lives two blocks away, call, text, email, carrier pigeon).  

Overall, I do feel a little relief in knowing that she will not be taking care of Nolan.  Especially now that we have happened to look her up on Iowa Courts Online.  It's hard for me to tell what most of the filings are for, but she is involved in close to 40 cases (almost all of them as a defendant).  It seems that we've dogged a bullet in that we will not have to deal with her in the future, and that she will be nowhere near our son.