8 long months of waiting

Its finally here. Less than 24 hours to go before the Cyclone football season kicks off. Its that time of year where our national title dreams are still alive. Excitement is in the air for a new coach, new season, while hopes that "this is the year" are talked about by the most avid of fans and scoffed at by those with more sense.

It will be exciting to see a playbook consisting of more than the usual 4 plays, one that attacks defenses instead of always playing it safe, and one which will hopefully keep our punter from winning the MVP award at the end of the season.

"Oh we will fight, fight, fight for Iowa State,
and may her colors ever fly..
Yes we will fight with might for Iowa State,
with a will to do or die
Rah Rah Rah
Loyal sons forever true,
and we will fight the battle through,
and when we hit that line we'll HIT IT HARD
every yard for I-S-U!"

LETS GO STATE!

does it look like a house yet?

Well, its getting there. Who would have thought we would have about 7 inches of rain.... in August... in Iowa? The crew should be ready to crane roof trusses in the morning and hopefully inside subs will be able to start at the end of next week.

In the first couple pictures you can see Allison if you look closely. The final picture is from the window in the great room.

State Fair

Last weekend Allison and I made the annual trip to the state fair to see some sows, plows and cows. We saw a lot of really great looking projects in the 4-H building and Allison was amazed at how a judge could rank a bunch of noisy sheep that "all looked exactly the same." she was further amazed at his comment on the lamb that won when he said "she has tight shoulders that flirt into nice wide hips." i wonder what kind of romantic things this guy says to his wife at home.....

We spent a lot of the day with Jason and Brenda, Brenda's mom, dad and sister, and Ally and Drew. It was fun seeing the kids perspective on things and their excitement for everything.

Later that day we met up with Allison's mom and dad. We ate a great supper at the Pork tent and then went to the Switchfoot concert. They put on a pretty good show.

Other highlights were: big ice cream cones, delicious tenderloins, the big slide, mullets, tractors, the butter cow, and beautiful weather.

here's a couple of poor quality pictures...

house update

i thought i would show a little update on the house we are currently building. We just poured the basement slab last friday and started framing today. its been a little frustrating for me up to this point, but i anticipate it will get better and be more fun from now on. there have been some site issues and contractor delays along with some forecasts of rain that didn't pan out. i'm about 2 weeks behind where i wanted to be now, but i'm used to it; it tends to happen on jobsites for some reason.



the location is nice...it sits on a little pond in south ames and won't have any neighbors across the pond for a few years at least. we are excited to see our vision and planning take shape.

trip to deluth

awhile back we made a trip to deluth, MN for a long weekend to attend a wedding of allison's college friend dane. it was quite the trip...i'm not much of a planner, so i rely heavily on allison to remember all the details of what needs to happen. this wouldn't be a problem, but allison really isn't much of a planner either, so it makes for some interesting times.

we left right after work on a thursday and drove just to north of the twin cities for a night of camping. i was quite proud i had printed off all the maps of deluth, the campsite area and where our hotel was. my confidence was shattered when allison suddenly asks, "did you remember the invitation?" oops. we are almost to the MN border and we don't know where the wedding is, where the reception is, how to get to either one, or what time they start. i finally got the idea to call my boss, who happens to own the building where we live, get into our place and have him find the invitation and relay this valuable information to us. we had a lot of fun camping that night. here is allison with her work of art and our roaring fire...
when we got there friday, we drove along the north shore of lake superior and even waded out into it. the next day we drove around the more scenic parts of deluth and enjoyed seeing a bridge that went up and down, some old ship anchors and many other little odds and ends.



on our way back to iowa, we took the scenic route through wisconsin. we managed to hit several town celebrations, causing lots of slow moving traffic. one town was even hosting the Stihl lumberjacking competition. lots of verrry interesting people in that town.

it was a fun little mini vacation and it makes us look forward to our next mini vacation to dallas over labor day.