NOLA

Last week I went to New Orleans for a very large pharmacy conference. The trip started off with some abrupt flight changes and a trip to Omaha in the snow that took about 4.5 hours, but all was well and I made it to the airport in one piece. The best part about New Orleans is the food, hands down. One of my favorite things there are the beignets (basically powdered doughnuts that taste a lot like a funnel cake). Susan, one of my co-residents, likes to watch the food network channel, lucky for me :). The first time we tried beignets we went to a place called Cafe Beignet, which was featured on the food network show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate".

Each Cafe Beignet has a cat. This guy is named Tux. The first morning we were there it was very early and we were the first customers of the day. Tux was very friendly and let us pet him.

Tux

The second time we had beignets we went to a place called Cafe Du Monde - which is really touristy and has been in its current location for a very long time. We actually preferred Cafe Beignet because it had way better atmosphere.

The beignets at Cafe Du Monde had way more powdered sugar !

Janelle, myself, and Susan

Susan and Megan

Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter

Mississippi River on the other side of Jackson Square

One of the best places that we ate at was a place called Muriels - loved it!!! Would go back in a heartbeat. Dinner took a very long time, but we had a lot of fun. We also ate at Emeril's Restaurant - what an experience!! Great service and great food! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of either of these restaurants.

Wednesday evening ASHP had a Mardi Gras party where we all got to walk around in the shed that holds the floats for the parade. There were a lot of crazy floats!!

One afternoon Janna, Megan and I took a taxi to the Garden District where there are lots of very large houses with great trees lining the streets. We were able to find Sandra Bullock's house and Nicholas Cage's house.

The Bowers's First Christmas

I have been waiting for this day; the day we get to go to a Christmas tree farm, find a tree, and decorate. One of my family's traditions is going to the Christmas tree farm the day after Thanksgiving, seeing Grandma and Grandpa there, and then decorating all day while we watch the Nebraska game. Well, last January, before Nate and I were even engaged, I told him that I was going to have a real tree next year, no matter what. And I have been anticipating this day ever since :).

Nate and I started the morning by preparing for the tree and moving tables, vacuuming, and getting the tree stand ready. We then headed out on a VERY blustery day. 

Heading out to the Christmas tree farm

We went to a little farm just east of Hastings, NE. This farm grows a couple different Christmas trees and then ships in Fraser and Douglas Firs from Michigan. We looked around at the home grown trees first, but settled on a Fraser Fir. I like trees with short needles, and that are tall and skinny, and are preferably not so thick that you can't see the bark.

Out looking at trees

Nate in front of the Fraser Firs

They had some very helpful high school boys who put the tree
on top of the Xterra for us

Just getting the tree in, with Cheddar already checking things out

Success!

Nate's family has a tradition of eating finger foods while putting up the Christmas tree. Well, I have no problem with eating, and I love snack foods. So after we got the tree up, we ran to Hy-Vee to pick up some food (with the hopes of Cheddar not destroying the tree while we were gone).

Loved our snack food - I think this tradition is a keeper!

Over the years, my Grandma Wheeler has been sending me ornaments as part of my Christmas gift. Now that I can have my own real tree, all those ornaments sure come in handy, and it's so much fun opening each individual ornament!

The finished tree!

I also had to decorate the mantle :)

The wreath came from the Christmas tree farm. On the mantle we just put boughs from under the tree that we had to cut off, and added sparkly pine cones and red berries. 

Cheddar was exhausted after all the hustle & bustle

I will now add a few pictures of the ornaments that are on our tree.

We picked up this ornament today at Hobby Lobby - everything was 50% off!

One of our favorite wedding gifts

A glass ornament from the Sandwhich Glass Museum in Sandwhich, Cape Cod

Nate's favorite ornament on the tree

Nate put lights up outside

Now on another note, pictured below is my Christmas cactus. I have had this plant for a number of years with it never blooming. All of a sudden, today, I noticed that it had 3 blooms on it!! Wow, Nate and I thought it was dying.

Chicken pocket pies

Today, boyfriend and I made one of our freezer meals while watching the Huskers. Miniature chicken pot pies. It took a little bit of work, but I think it will totally be worth it. I know the one week I had IRB documents due, we depended heavily on our homemade freezer meals.

The filling I made

Nate was much better at rolling out the dough and filling the pies than I was 

End result :)

Mustache Friends

Well, it's Sunday evening and the football games are winding down. As we await tonight's episode of The Amazing Race, I thought I would share a little bit about our weekend. It was eventful, relaxing, fun, tiring, and memorable. First of all, we got our new iPhones :-) they're the new 4s version. they're super cool, but the fact that we have Sprint out in the middle of nowhere means that we won't be able to use all the features all the time. AKA, our cell service sucks here. Here's Kathryn's, she got white, I got black.

So that's cool. But most notably for the weekend, our wonderful friends Katie D and Jason T came to visit us from Omaha. It was so nice having the familiar faces around. While our time thus far in Grand Island has been nice, it was a real treat to have a little bit of "home" around for a while. K&J came in on Friday evening and we took them to one of our new favorites in GI, the Wave Pizza Company. They make all kinds of specialty pizzas and sandwiches.

Then we went home and played some games. We called it a night kind of early. This was for two reasons:
1) We're getting kind of old.
2) We had an early morning of fun adventures planned.

At 7:30 am Saturday, we met up with Megan and Susan (co-residents at the VA) and the 6 of us headed to Kearney. We were participating in an event called HeartChase, held on the UNK campus. HeartChase is an event sponsored by the American Heart Association and is designed to raise money and awareness for cardiovascular health and research. Below is a video explaining a little bit about it.

HeartChase – Get Your Game On! from Non-profit LBM on Vimeo.

Our team was "The 'StachePack", and we set our selves apart by wearing some very stylish mustaches throughout the event.

The day consisted of running (literally) around campus looking for hidden point-cards and completing group and individual challenges. The organizers describe it as a cross between The Amazing Race and Minute to Win It. We had to use our smartphones to follow the map and find the different stations. We also had to use or phones to scan the point-cards. Our new iPhones came in quite handy :-).

We had a lot of fun, but we did not win :-( Oh well. After a quick stop at the Kearney Target, it was time to head home and relax in front of the Husker game. In the evening, our visiting chef, Jason, was busy in the kitchen cooking us a wonderful dinner of cherry and red wine glazed pork chops, asparagus, and smashed garlic new potatoes. It was a long process, but delicious and definitely worth the wait.
On Sunday, I (Nate) was busy in the kitchen making pancakes, baking sugar cookies and grilling hamburgers. Kathryn and Katie went for a walk at our favorite local lake/park, while Jason and I stayed home and talked fantasy football strategy.

Well our friends have headed back to Omaha, and The Amazing Race has just started, so I'm going to say goodbye. I think Cheddar is glad that all the activity is dying down. She, and We, will sleep well tonight.

GI Happenings

Well, I decided to take a break from writing about our honeymoon to let ya'll know what we've been up to out here in GI. We have been having great weather these last few days and I have been trying to soak it all up before it's freezing cold. So one day last week Nate and I went out to a nearby lake (or pond) to do some geocaching.

Nate looking for a geocache

Found it!

We also bought a bird feeder for the cat this weekend. Yup that's right, the purpose isn't to feed the birds, though that will occur as well, but to occupy Cheddar. We're trying to keep the kitty entertained while we are at work all day. I thought she might be getting bored since it's a smaller house to roam and less people to keep track of. Therefore, she gets a bird feeder, with hopes of having birds to watch. :)

One of our gifts I received at my bridal shower was a tool to make beer chicken. Since the weather was nice this weekend, we decided to try it out. So I googled a recipe and we gave it a shot. It turned out pretty well, but I think we need to turn the grill down a bit next time as the skin got quite crispy. :)

This weekend I also made my meal for freezer group. The other residents and I created a group where we each make a meal and then freeze it and exchange meals. I made mini meatloaves. They look nasty in the picture, but they sure smelled good!!! Hopefully they'll be edible, because this whole freezing thing is new to me.

Mini-meatloaves

All ready for the freezer

Nate decided he needed to make a peg board in the garage for all his tools. Of course, he had to go buy more tools to make this peg board to hold his tools :). See how that works everyone? But it was a good project and now everything is organized. I think he's sad the project is over.

Getting started on the peg board

Finished product