Preparing for the Move

As we prepare to move, we’ve been visiting family & friends – which has been such a blessing! Lynn is done with her official money-making job and is spending time at home preparing for our big move.

One of the highlights of our September so far was going to an ISU football game. We were so blessed to get free tickets for the September 6^th games again Kent State. We were overjoyed to just be going to the game, and were even more blown away when we arrived and realized our tickets were in the lower section about the 50 yard line in the 20^th & 21^st rows! ISU won and we had a blast at our last ISU football game for awhile. Here’s some pictures & a mini-movie to show you where we got to sit!

Another fun ISU activity was visiting the newly build Alumni Center, located on the hill between Jack Trice Stadium and Hilton Coliseum. Since we live in the neighborhood we were invited to an Open House with free rootbeer floats. We had a great time learning about the many details of the new building, it’s not just a building to house the Alumni programs, but looks to campus buildings for its architectural features & looks to the future in it’s sustainability & green building. Jeff Johnson, the president of the Alumni Association gave us a tour of his years of dreaming!

I had a lot of fun with my sister-in-law, Ashley, coming to Ames to present a Pampered Chef Cooking Show. We had a great time making mini-cheeseburgers & an inside-out chocolate cake! It was a lot of fun and I know that Ashley would love to help you host a show anytime if you’re interested!

We headed out on a road trip on September 11^th to see friends & family throughout Minnesota & Iowa. We stayed with Dan’s Aunt & Uncle for the first weekend in Minneapolis before picking up Lynn’s grandma Vance to bring up to Lynn’s parents.

We stopped and retook pictures at the location of Lynn’s childhood home, since we lost the pictures of when we stopped before. Here they are…

While visiting Lynn’s parents we were able to help with a few things out at the house, got a tour of St. Cloud State University (when Lynn’s brother Nate just started), saw Lynn’s cousin Heather, and went to a great restaurant called Anton’s. Anton’s had all these geese in the back that you could feed – Dan got some food and as you can see they really loved him!

Next we were off to be dairy farmers for a few days in Clarksville at Dan’s home farm. We had a lot of fun! When Pam & Dave got home we helped with making haylage (chopped up hay for feeding the cows) – here’s a short movie of how it’s done.

Pam and I picked a bunch of apples and peeled, cut, and froze them. We also took some home to Ames and I made 5 apple crisps and an apple pie this past week. Here’s the great apple tree!

On Monday we got the chance to James at the Crossroads soccer game, as he’s the assistant soccer coach. Nicole, his wife, played a volleyball game afterwards. Lynn finally understands what it’s like for Dan to watch a basketball or football game and get all worked up because he knows what it’s like to be out there playing. They girls played really well and came so close to winning, but lost in the last few moments. It was a great game! After the game we all went out to Red Robin!

This past week we were home in Ames, which was so nice. Lynn had coffee with her best friend Kate before being she left for Spain for a week and a half! On Friday we got free chili because it was the Memorial Union’s 80^th birthday on the ISU campus. It’s great in Ames. We had a lot of fun playing with our housemate’s cats (Tuna & Salmon) – they’re really cute as you can see from these pics!

August's Happenings!

Well we did a bit better updating this time... Here's what happened in August!

We started off the month in Clarksville visiting friends and family. A fun highlight was another trip to the Bremer County Fair with Dan's Grandpa Neil and Grandma Mavis to see his cousin Kelsey compete in the Bovine (Cow) Obstacle Course. Kelsey got 2nd place - she did very well! Her's a picture of her and a video (link to You Tube) of another kid doing it with commentary from Lynn.

Lynn had a blast hanging out with her good friends Kate, Allie, and Laura for ice cream since Laura was back in town getting married in mid-August.

We celebrated our anniversary a little late by heading to the Story City Carousel with our friends Seth & Emily. We visited the same Carousel after our wedding ceremony and before the wedding reception with our wedding party. So many great memories!

We like most of you watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics and then had subsequent late nights of Olympic Cheering!

We've had the joy of seeing so many friends before we move overseas. Our friends Mark & Charmaine were visiting Ames and we got to see them as well as see Mark preach at North Grand Christian Church.

An unfortunate occurrence this summer is that we had three wedding we really wanted to be at on August 16th - Dan's brother James, and our friends John & Laura, and Cornell & Erica. We obviously celebrated with the family but Lynn at least got to attend a shower for Erica!

Lynn started working less and less in August and is now done at Gee Willie, while Dan is still working 2-4 days a week, while we work on preparations for moving. Then the wedding preparations began! Lynn had a lot of fun helping Nicole decorate an coordinate the many details of a wedding! Both Lynn & Ashley were personal attendants and Matt was the Best Man and Dan a groomsman. It was a beautiful day! Here's just a few pictures:

The next weekend we had a garage sale with a few friends, which is always fun and a good way to get rid of the stuff we don't really need. We had a huge garage sale...


We celebrated Labor Day with a Grill-Out with our housemates. We're staying with some friends until we leave, Eric & Stephanie, as well as their friends Tom & Angie. It's a full house but a big enough one to accommodate us all for these couple months. Henry also joined us. We also have two little kittens that are Eric & Stephanie's that live here too!