Sweet baby Alaina

On Tuesday, our friends Karie and Kevin were nice enough to let us come over and check out their new little girl Alaina.  She is so tiny and sweet.  She has pretty hair and beautiful little hands with long skinny fingers.

When we were over there, Karie told me that this is the happiest she's ever been in her whole life.  Doesn't that just make your heart melt for their adorable little family?

In other news, on Tuesday, we got an offer on our condo!  Remember I posted way back in May that we were trying to sell.  We've had a good amount of interest but nobody had pulled the trigger.  We're in the process of counter-offering back and forth now.  Fingers crossed!

Dear Mom and Dad,

I've know I've tried to tell you before, but on the day of your 25th wedding anniversary, I want to take the opportunity to thank you again. Today I don't want to thank you for the books you showed me, or the places you took me, or the way you loved me, but I want to take this chance to thank you for the way you loved each other.

I was blow drying my hair this morning, one of the only times of day I'm not either on my computer, or reading, or talking.  :)  Ten minutes where I can do nothing but think.  And this morning I was thinking about you guys.  

I had a lot of good memories flashing through my mind this morning.  Mom, I remember the homemade Christmas ornament that you made Dad back when you guys were still dating, and how every year it is always the very first ornament you guys put on our Christmas tree.  Or all those Friday nights you'd get dressed up and kiss us kids goodbye when you went on your date nights.  I remember trying to be there for you Mom when Dad was working in South Korea for a year.  How you cried and told me that you missed your best friend.  And how you guys would talk to each other on the web cam every day.  Or how I've never heard either of you say a mean word about each other.  Ever.  Even in the middle of an argument.

There are so many things I've learned from watching you over the years.  I've learned that your marriage is more important then the house you live in.  It is more important then the state or country you are living in.  It is more important than your job.  And it is even more important than your kids.  It is the foundation of not only your family, but your life.  Watching you two I've learned how you keep a friendship alive.  I've learned about love.  I've learned what it means to be a family.

As I was leaving the house for work this morning, I was thinking how I can't help but wonder what the next 24 years will hold for Kevin and I.  Just as I was thinking this, I turned the corner in our condo to head out the front door to work and saw an umbrella lying in front of the door.  Kevin realized that it was drizzling outside, and that I would be too caught up in my own head to even notice the weather, let alone remember to bring an umbrella, so he had put it in front of the door so I wouldn't forget it.

It's these moments that I think we might be lucky enough to have a marriage like yours.  And I'm happy that I had such great parents to show me the way.

I love you both very much.

Happy 25th anniversary!

Amanda 

Slept in a tent this weekend

So we crossed off number four from our pre-baby bucket list this weekend: Go camping, sleep in a tent, and build our own fire.  We went with three of my best friends and their husbands to Two Rivers campground in Waterloo, Nebraska (about 30 minutes away on 277th and F street).  Neither Kevin or I have been camping in years, and I've definitely never been camping as an "adult" where I was responsible for helping set up the tent and cooking the food.  We pulled up to the campsite and I was shocked by the sheer number of huge RV's crowded around our campground.  We were one of two people actually camping in tents... only in America do we "get back to nature" by bringing out our huge pick up trucks and ginormous RVs and parking them so close together you can't really see nature.

Aside from the surprise of the RVs, the camping was great.  We were right by the Platte river, which was actually really nice and there were a ton of trees.  Despite Kevin and I's obvious lack of outdoors skills we managed to get the tent assembled before it started raining.  After about ten minutes of drizzle I was beginning to think that all those people with the RV's might have had the right idea...  luckily, it cleared up after about 20 minutes and was beautiful for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday afternoon we spent about an hour trying to teach our friend to play Pitch, but after getting about halfway through the game, she declared that it was boring.  Ha!  Gotta love Steph.  We moved on to another game that Steph taught us called Golf, which turned out to be a lot of fun.  And of course it turned into a drinking game.  I won!

All in all, a great weekend.  There's talk of making this an annual trip.  We were glad that we got to experience of tent camping, but agreed that a cabin might be better for next year.  Anybody have any cabins within 2 hours of Omaha that they'd recommend?

Music, Family, and Friends

Last weekend my mom and I took an impromptu trip to watch my cousin Sarah sing her senior recital at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.  It was great to hear Sarah sing, and great to spend some quality time with my mom, aunts, and cousins.  Kevin and I were lucky enough to have Sarah sing at our wedding, and she did an even more amazing job with this recital.  In my book, you have to some really freakin big kahunas to get up in front of a bunch of people and perform solo.  I was glad I had my camera along to get some pictures of it.  Lately I've been working on number 13 on our pre-baby bucket list... "take up photography".  I was pretty proud that I managed to snap a few photos in low light without flash that weren't completely blurry. Isn't Sarah gorgeous?  I love the color of her dress.

Speaking of music... Kevin bought me tickets to Mumford and Sons tonight.  He knows I've been listening to them quite a bit lately on my friends Steph's blog.  Steph and I have been friends since junior high school and she is amazingly awesome - she just started a blog called The Bad Tourist.  If you like Indie music you have to check out this playlist she created last week.  Click here.  I've been listening to it non-stop for over a week.

Here are some songs by Mumford and Sons for your enjoyment:

Bills, Bills, Bills

I worked so hard to avoid student loans during my undergraduate degree.  I filled out a ton of scholarship applications, saved my a lot of my measly $7.00 an hour high school salary, and went to an in-state college.  I was even on an $40 a week budget most of the way through college.  Yes, $40 per week for all my food, entertainment, clothes, gas, etc, etc...  needless to say it was a thrifty few years but I finally made it through scott free.

Then came my Master's degree.  I filled out my FAFSA and to my surprise the United States government gifted me $8,000 worth of subsidized student loans, no interest loans..... yes please :)  Soon enough the checks started coming.  Best of all the money didn't have to be spent exclusively on school.  Sure, most of it went towards paying for the pricey classes at Creighton ($2,000 per class), but I had a few other expenses come up in 2010...wedding, honeymoon, and a condo for Kevin and I.  Before I knew it my balance had grown to a hefty $13,000!  yikes.

But, after a nice tax refund and bonus, the balance is finally paid in full.  Victory. 

We're working hard to try to accomplish number six on our pre-baby bucket list (paying off student loans, our car, and saving up money).  I took a look at our budget the other day and Kevin and I have saved enough money to pay for the rest of our MBA programs, and if all goes well hopefully we'll make double payments on his car and get it paid off this year. 

Speaking of budgeting.  When I was putting our new budget together I took a close look at all of our bills for the first time in almost a year.  I have a habit of setting everything on auto-bill pay and not paying attention...  bad habit, I know.  Apparently Sprint had been charging us for $10 a month for some type of service that we accidentally signed up for (and that we don't need).  Then I took a look at our cable bill.  Almost $200 a month.  So we started going through all the charges.  Do you know how much Cox Cable charges per month for a DVR box?  $17.99 per month!  And best of all you never pay off the DVR box... you keep paying rent on it forever.  I have two DVR boxes at Kevin and I's rental house and one at our condo, so that means over the last four years we've paid over $2,600 for DVR boxes.  $2,600 dollars! 

I did a little research online and you can buy a really nice DVR box with no monthly subscriptions for $349.  Or there are a bunch of different Tivo options ($299 for the box and then $12 a month, or you can get a lifetime subscription to their service for $399) - in two years you'll have broken even on your investment.  AND Tivo has some features that your standard box doesn't have - it interacts with Netflix and Amazon's Unbox, and there's even an iPad app that allows you to use your iPad as an interactive remote. 

Pretty cool huh?  I'm still looking into all the options, but I tired of getting price gouged by Cox so I'm going to try to find out something this weekend.  If it were totally up to me I'd probably get rid of cable entirely and just keep our Netflix account to watch movies.  My husband promptly vetoed that idea since he wouldn't have live access to his sports channels.  Does anyone have any recommendations on a DVR box?  Or any ways you've saved money recently?

Tea, honey, brown sugar, lemon, and whiskey

Last weekend Kevin and I watched my little brother Jonah while my parents went to Mexico to an all-inclusive resort.  They took a well-deserved vacation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.  We had a great weekend together.  The highlight was going to visit Kevin's cousin Jeff at his fire station with Kevin's sister and her family (Thanks Jeff!). 

The low-point of the weekend was after Jonah left I immediately started to get sick.  Jonah had a cough the whole weekend and I think the little bugger got me sick. Soar throat, runny nose, coughing, and a fever off and on.  I've been sick for over a week now.  Sucks!  

I'm taking Mucinex, got on an antibiotic on Saturday, and took it easy all weekend (Kevin and I spent all Sunday on the couch watching the entire first season of Dexter) but I'm still feeling pretty miserable.  Yesterday a co-worker recommended a shot of whiskey to help me feel better.  Apparently a doctor friend of his said a shot of whiskey is often more effective than most cough medicines.  Not sure if I'm desperate enough for a shot of warm whiskey so after surfing around on the internet, I stumbled across a hot totty recipe.  It called for tea, honey, brown sugar, lemon, and whiskey.  Tastes sort of weird but feels pretty good on my throat.  God I hope it helps, I'm tired of being sick.  Any other suggestions?

An unconventional pet.

So we've officially accomplished one of the 15 things on our pre-baby bucket list.  Number 14.  We've gotten a pet, but it isn't exactly the goldfish that we had originally planned on.  In fact it's sort of far from that.  Many of our other friends are either pregnant right now or are soon on their way (don't get me wrong - we think bringing a new life into the world is so cool and we're incredibly excited for them) however Kevin and I aren't quite in that phase of our lives yet, and we actually may have temporarily taken a sharp turn into the unconventional.  Not only are we not pregnant or planning on it anytime soon, but we've added a very different addition to our family.  Rats! 

Ok, we all know you're weird Amanda, but RATS?!  Really???

Well it all started off with me looking into what fish we should buy.  I researched diligently to try to find the coolest, lowest maintenance fish in the world.  But during my research I ran into a few snags.  No matter what fish you buy you can't get around the inevitable chore of cleaning out a fish tank, and something about that dirty fish tank smell has always bothered me.  Maybe it's the fish poop floating in water.  Anyhow, even if you manage to keep the tank pristine and beautifully clean, for all your efforts the fish doesn't really provide much in return.  From what I can tell fish don't learn their names, let alone do tricks.  And you can't pet them (unless your my Grandma Tiffin and have very interesting gold fish)

So before I learned about rats, I though that if you wanted a cute furry animal that could learn their name, and cared about you, you were limited to two choices.  Cat or Dog.  Kevin and I both love dogs, but we're realistic and know that a dog's would be much more demanding on our schedules than we're willing to sacrifice, and we would both feel terrible leaving a dog alone to spend all day in a kennel.  Cats can be cool, but I also hate the smell of cat litter, and unless you have an exceptionally cool cat, they mostly just want to be left alone to lay in the sun.  Not to mention that Kevin's allergic to cats. 

Well here's where the rats come in.  I called up Petsmart with very low expectations on receiving quality pet advice, but I was super lucky and got to chat with Jessie, the most passionate and knowledgeable person about animals that I've ever met.  After talking for about 30 minutes on the phone, I asked her what pet she'd personally recommend, and she said that the best pet she ever owned was a rat.  Here are some of the things you may find surprising about rats:

• Rats are extremely smart.  They are about as super curious and as intelligent as dogs and some are much more intelligent.
• They are extremely social and get to know their owners.
• They learn their names.
• They come when called.
• They can do tricks.
• They are very clean animals and clean themselves constantly just like cats.
• They can eat any kind of food.
• They cost less than ten dollars and live less about 3 years... not a huge commitment.
• You can buy two rats so they have a buddy to hang out with and if you need to leave for the weekend, or heck, even the week, you can just leave them plenty of food and water and they'll be fine.

Um, talk about the perfect pet.  Other than those GROSS rat tails....

Before making too many judgements about how gross rat tails are, I'd recommend you actually see one.  I was weirded out by the idea at first too, but once you hold a rat and see their funny furry little faces, their tails don't seem that gross at all. 

So enough of the yapping and onto some pictures.  Here's Kevin showing his niece Presleigh our rat Mims.  Presleigh is a very girly little girl, so we didn't know what she'd think of the rats, but she loved them.  We were a little worried she may scwosh them out of excitement, but she did great.

I took a little video of our rats.  Given the negative connotation to the word "rat" we've actually taken to calling them our "friends" instead of rats.  Makes for some funny jokes.  Yeah.  We're weird.

The last part of the video is Mims doing her walking trick.  That little bugger is smart.  She learns tricks soooo fast.  Oh, and the plastic wall contraption is a rat playpen that we bought online called the Grrreat wall.  It's super easy to put up and they can't escape.  Yes, you really can buy anything online, including a rat playpen :)

So what do you guys think?  Common, they're kinda cute huh?

Meet the rats: Mims and Murphy from Amanda Kohler on Vimeo.

Thank you anonymous donor

This Sunday Kevin's sister and brother-in-law offered us an impromptu invitation to go check out Lauritzen Gardens with their family.  His sister mentioned something about Christmas stuff and trains and since neither Kevin or I had been there before, it was free admission, it was close to downtown, and a good chance to visit with the family, it was the perfect invitation.  We spent about 15 minutes digging out gloves, hats, and scarfs, etc., assuming that since it was called Lauritzen Gardens that this little adventure would entail... well, gardens.  When we arrived, we were excited to instead find a nice warm building full of plants and model train sets.

Kevin's nieces and nephews were freaking adorable as usual.  I just loved the little headband that little baby J. had in in her hair!

My favorite part was as the neat wooden model buildings of historic sites around Omaha.  Here's the Woodmen building and Central High School (my dad went to high school there back in the day).

Thank you Mr. (or Mrs!) Anonymous donor who paid for all of Omaha's free admission into Lauritzen Gardens every Sunday in December.  We had a lovely time.

Oh and I hope you guys like the new look of the blog.  I decided I wanted a change from the teal and yellow.  Do you guys like the change?  Hate it?  I'll post something in the next day or two explaining how I created the new blog header.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday.

Hair Styles of Christmas Past

Kevin prefers long hair and I'm lazy when it comes to getting my hair cut, which means my hair has gotten progressively longer since we met in early 2008.  Today I have the longest hair I've ever had in my life.  I've started getting sort of an itch for a change, so I thought I'd look at some of the hairstyles from the past... here goes the hair style flash back!

2010:  Long!

2009: Medium-ish with bangs

2007-2008:  Medium with and without bangs

2006: Short!

And just for fun... 1993 

Let's just say my mom's hair dresser skills left a little to be desired.  Love ya mom :)

Anybody have a vote?  What about a hair dresser recommendation in Omaha?

P.S. - Kevin looked at the computer when I was putting the pictures together, and was like "Weirdo, why are you making a collage of yourself?"  Ha!

Pre-baby bucket list

  

Most people that know me well, know that I love to plan.  I was planning for college when I was a freshman in high school; I vigorously planned myself through college and ended up finishing my undergraduate degree unexpectedly early; I bought my first house before I was out of college; I diligently obsessively planned our wedding and honeymoon; and would you expect anything less, but I'm already planning the next big phase in our lives:  babies!  Don't get too excited yet mom and dad.... keep reading :)  This time, I'm determined to not rush into the next phase but to to thoroughly appreciate and enjoy the present.  I know this is extremely sappy, but I'm so very much in love with my husband Kevin, and want to just enjoy our time as newlyweds.  And I know he's going to make a fabulous dad one day, but it doesn't need to be tomorrow, or next month, or even next year.

So in that light, we've created a pre-baby bucket list of all of the things we hope to accomplish before we tackle our next big adventure.  I say hope, because sometimes life takes some unexpected twists, and by no means would our lives be devastated if a baby came earlier than expected, but I'd love, love, love it if we could make it through this list first.

So here it goes, my pre-baby bucket list!

1.  Visit two foreign countries.  Mexico and Canada don’t count.  Maybe somewhere like Istanbul, Turkey and South Africa??

2.  Take a cooking class together.

3.  Go on a vacation with our friends... maybe to go watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers play in the Big 12 Championship or heck, maybe even at the National Championship (we can hope right)? 

4.  Go camping, sleep in a tent, and build our own fire.

5.  Get in the habit of praying together often and out-loud.

6.  Pay off Kevin’s car and my MBA loan and save at least $2,000 dollars to spend on baby stuff.

7.  Get in the habit of keeping my bathroom and closet clean.

8.  Get good at yoga.

9.  Be the maid of honor in Emily’s wedding.

10.  Have 15 sleepovers with our nieces and nephews (and my little brother Jonah!) and spoil them rotten (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen)

11.  Finish our MBA’s and throw a huge party to celebrate.

12.  Do something nice for our parents, like… really nice (Kevin's parents, My parents).

13.  Take up photography.

14.  Get a fish and keep it alive for a year.

15.  Get a tattoo  : )

So there you have it - 15 things to accomplish!  Am I completely crazy or does anyone else have a pre-baby bucket list?

Big 12 championship!

All the stars lined up last weekend and both Kevin and I had to travel for work to the Dallas area (I spent last week in Fort Worth, and Kevin is in Shreveport, Louisiana this week).  We were able both able to extend our work trips to meet over the weekend in Arlington, Texas and got to go to the Big 12 Championship game over the weekend.  Thank you Union Pacific!  Our good friends the Trout's from Minneapolis joined us and we also met up with a bunch of other friends that came down for the game.  It was an awesome day until the very last minute of the game... Good guys lost, Bad guys won!  Huskers 20; Oklahoma 23.

Even though we lost, it was a great trip.  The weather was beautiful, we had a great day with friends, and the stadium was absolutely incredible.  Trivia fact:  The Cowboy's Stadium is the largest dome in the world with the biggest HD television in the world.  Doesn't it sort of look like one huge space ship just landed right in the middle of Texas?

Please forgive my obnoxious sunglasses in all these pictures.  The finest the gas station had to offer! 

And of course, I brought the flip along for the ride.  Friday at the piano bar, Saturday at the game.


Big 12 Game from Amanda Kohler on Vimeo.