Wind Storm...

Yesterday Jayson and I headed to the gym around 4:30pm. While I was on the elliptical with my ipod in I heard this crazy rushing noise. It was so loud, I heard it over all the machines, the tv, and even my own ipod blasting in my ears. Nobody said or did anything, they were all just looking out the window. It is hard to explain, but the gym at Creighton has windows on one side, but you have to look through the glass of the indoor pool to see outside. I looked and couldn't see anything, it was just a wall of white. I thought that was weird because you can usually see some other buildings and a parking lot. Jayson came up from playing basketball to see if I knew what was going on. We watched the computer screen of the student who was working at the gym's front desk. He had a weather map up and the Omaha metro (where we were, and where we live) was purple, not red, but purple, which is worse than red. The sirens were blaring, so we decided to hang out at the gym for another 30 minutes while the storm passed. We went to the windows to check everything out and it was pouring, not raining, but pouring. So that blur of white that I saw out the window was wind and rain! Once we finally got in our car to drive home, we turned on the radio to hear that it wasn't a tornado, but a wind storm. They estimated the wind was blowing at 90 miles per hour! We couldn't get on the freeway because the entrance we needed to get on was flooded, two cars were stuck. We drove through residential streets to go home and it was crazy, there were huge trees pulled up all over the city, there was a lot of property damage to homes, and everything had leaves stuck to it from all the wind. We were hoping that our house and other car (which was parked next to a huge tree) were ok. When we pulled into our neighborhood, this is what we saw...



This tree is right next to us, I am standing on our front porch taking this picture. Thank heavens the tree fell the way it did, otherwise we would have had a tree in our bedroom window!




This tree DID fall the wrong way and ended up on our neighbor's house. This is just the opposite side of the building that we live on.





There were (and still are) ginormous piles of branches and leaves on every single corner.



This huge pine tree also fell against another building in our neighborhood. The family wasn't home, so when they got back they had a pine tree blocking their entry into their home. The clean up crew was too quick for me to get a picture, so here are the left overs...


This was the clean up crew that came today to cut down the trees. They were working on the one by our house for an hour or so, and Jayson and I were just sitting at the window like 2 nerds hooked on the discovery channel.

The power was out all of last night (starting around 5 and just kicked back this afternoon around noon). Luckily we have a gas stove that we were able to use for dinner, and we bought ice to keep our freezer stuff cold, but it makes me think that we are probably not as prepared as we need to be in case there was a real emergency.

We had also rented two movies last night and were mad that we didn't have power to watch them. We are so dependent on our power! We ended up going over to our neighbors and talking by the glow of flashlights until midnight! It was really fun.

New Carpet and More College World Series!

Jayson and I have wanted to get new carpet in our family room since the moment we walked through the house. We ordered it through Lowes and let's just say it took 4 weeks, lots of phone calls, and finally some negotiating to get it in! But, on Tuesday it finally came... but don't worry there was more trouble with the install. The carpet layers said they would be there between 12-2pm, so Jayson came home early from school. Well at 4:30 they showed up! We were mad because we had tickets to go to game 2 of the College World Series so we moved all the furniture ourselves (even though our price included moving furniture) just so we could speed up the process. We asked the men if they could run our cable cord underneath the carpet so we don't have to keep tripping on it and they said "that is above and beyond and we'll have to charge extra" So you are telling me that after being 2 and a 1/2 hours late and not having to move any furniture that it is "above and beyond"? So Jayson kept encouraging them to make a deal and finally (after calling his boss) he agreed.
So after much blood, sweat and tears here is the finished product...



In the process...


The old carpet...





MORE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES
So it turns out that Jayson and I are big baseball fans, who knew? We went to a game last Saturday and then Monday we met up with the Clements (my sister-in-laws family) for dinner after they had gone to game 1 of the finals. We had so much fun talking with them. They are a great family. They were so nice and gave us 4 general admission tickets for game 2 and if the series was split they had tickets to game 3 that they couldn't use because they were flying home that day. We invited our next door neighbors to game 2 and had a lot of fun sitting next to the Clements. Thanks for the donuts Todd, they were delicious! Our neighbor Targhee bought these amazing fries, they are a potato that has been peeled (like an apple peeler) into thin curly pieces. They were really fun to eat!


Game 2 was really exciting because Frenso State (which we were cheering for because they are a WAC team) was down 5-0 (after losing game 1) in the third inning and came back to win the game 17-10 or something like that! It was really exciting with lots of big hits and home runs.

Thank you Clements! (Sorry that I am blocking you Tanya :)



So the championship came down to a game 3 on Wednesday. We took our friends Andy and Liz with us.



Game 3 was a little less exciting than game 2 but we had great seats and still had lots of fun. We were so happy that Fresno State was able to represent the WAC and beat the big Georgia bulldogs 6-1!

College World Series

Omaha is famous for two things (and two things only)


1. The Henry Doorly Zoo


and...

2. Home of NCAA men's College World Series


Since we have already been to the zoo, we thought we would hit up the CWS while it was in town. It has been crazy here since the series started about 10 days ago. There are a lot of empty property lots around our house and they have been turned into parking lots ranging from $5 to $20, depending on how close they are to the stadium. The sidewalks have been packed day and night with all sorts of people walking to and from the games. Saturday afternoon Stanford and Georgia were playing so we thought we would try and get tickets. We walked to the game (since the closest parking lot would be our own house) and Jayson was like a little kid in a candy store walking the streets with all the vendors selling all the team paraphernalia. We just scalped tickets and it is a law in Omaha that they can't resell tickets for more than the face value, so we got general admission tickets for cheap! We sat in the general admission seats for the first few innings and then moved to better seats. We were cheering for Stanford, but unfortunately they were not as good as Georgia. We had a great time baking in the sun and eating my favorite... Dippin' Dots.



Our seats in general admission...



We upgraded seats after the 4th inning




I would like to think that this is just a close picture and not a game of chubby bunny...


My handsome man

Lauritzen Botanical Gardens

We live right next door to the Lauritzen Botanical Gardens and today was neighbor appreciation day, so we got in for free! We went with our friends Andy, Liz, Kjersta, and her babies, Lily and Ruby. We have been so thankful for the weather the past couple of days (not the tornados of course), it has been quite cool and not as humid...until today! Even though there was a breeze, by the time we were walking home we were all nice and sweaty! The gardens were really cool, it reminded me a lot of the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. There were pretty rose gardens, Japanese gardens, and even a children's garden (which is of course where we spent most of our time). The gardens are over 100 acres! We definitley got our exercise in for the day.




This was also part of neighbor appreciation day. These are wild turkeys that roam around our neighborhood. We have seen several walking around our house and we have even seen some walking on the side of the freeway! Guess we already know what we are doing for Thanksgiving :)




Me and Lily


Children's garden.



Ruby and Lily in the bumble bee exhibit


Jayson with Lily

Bachelorette Superfan

I promise I am trying to find a job....



I am a little embarrassed to admit, but yesterday I watched a few hours of the Bachelorette marathon (with Trista and Ryan) on VH1. I also admit this is not the first time I have been sucked into marathons. Anybody remember the America's Next Top Model marathon?
I pulled myself away (during a commercial of course) to start fixing dinner and our power got turned off. I was kind of relieved that something was pulling me away and kind of mad that I was going to miss the moment when Ryan proposed to Trista.

After a few hours the power came back on and when I turned the TV back on at 9:30 at night they were showing the wedding!!! Good thing the power got turned off or else there would have been a permanent butt mark on the couch :)