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.