Easter 08

Easter came early this year, in fact, the earliest it's been in quite awhile. Heidi, Vokey and I travelled up to Ames to spend the weekend with family. It was good to see my parents and family, especially Olivia, who is now 5 months old. She smiles a lot and is much more expressive than the last time we saw her, in January. Her brother, Lukas, is a great big brother and I think will enjoy being the "big brother" influence in Olivia's life.

We attended Easter Services Sunday morning, starting off with an omelette/pancake breakfast at the church. After the service we hurried home to start cooking Easter dinner: oven fried chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, broccoli, strawberry pretzel salad, and Spencer's birthday cake for dessert (He turns 18 on 30 March). it's not the typical Easter dinner, but it's one that we love.

This weekend also marked the start of Heidi's weekly visits to the Des Moines office for a project she's working on in West Des Moines. For the next 12 weeks she will be in Des Moines on Monday and Tuesday for project meetings, site visits, etc and staying with family.

meow

Try as she might, Vokey cannot keep the neighbor's cat, Natrone, away from our house. Natrone really likes Heidi and often comes to visit. He also comes running when called by name. Sometimes we will find Natrone just sitting on our deck or porch, waiting for attention.

Natrone's owner told us that he used to visit our elderly neighbor, Agnes and she would let him inside. Agnes was moved to a nursing home recently and Natrone misses her so today, he snuck in our house! Even after Vokey barked and chased him away, Natrone sat with his nose to our window for quite awhile this afternoon.

8 seconds

While Mike stayed home to study, Heidi headed downtown to the newly opened Power and Light entertainment district with some friends from the running group. Earlier in the day (while running) some of them discussed the fact that the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) were competing at the Sprint Center. Mickey and Doug are closet PBR fans so Heidi found herself at her first Sprint Center event-and first bull riding competition!

ups and downs

Our weekend has been one of ups and downs. It started off great with our dinner at Justus Drugstore. Our Saturday morning run was a hilly one, but the weather was warmer than usual although very windy. Both Saturday and Sunday were warm with temperatures reaching the 70s. Vokey got to go on a walk around the Plaza to see the demolition beginning on the Bloch Cancer Survivor's Park (one of Heidi's projects) and picked out a treat at Three Dog Bakery.

This morning, Vokey got into some mouse poison we had so we spent the morning at the emergency vet and they kept her this afternoon. The vet warned us that she might be lethargic and needed to take it easy tonight but as soon as Heidi pulled into the driveway and Vokey saw our neighbors outside, Vokey jumped out of the car through the window (the car was still moving!). Luckily, she seems to be ok after the day's scary events.

Two hours ago we were enjoying catching up with the neighbors after a long winter spent hibernating, but we're all back indoors now since it's 30 degrees cooler and raining. They're calling for snow tonight.

justus is served

last night we ventured north up 169 highway to smithville, missouri. accompanied by our friends lynnis and larry, our destination was justus drugstore. it's a long way to go to fill a prescription, but we went to fill our stomachs! the historic drugstore has been renovated into an amazing restaurant where owners Jonathan Justus and his wife, Camille Eklof, use local ingredients to create sophisticated food.

one review we read criticized Justus's 'slow food' approach, but we thoroughly enjoyed our 4 hour dinner. between the 4 of us, we sampled the crawdad cakes, the foie gras terrine (wonderful!), the curly endive salad, maytag blue cheese salad (with green apple gelee!), goat cheese salad, vegetable risotto, roast chicken, american kobe flat iron steak and pork two ways. we finished the evening with gooey almond cake and creme brulee.

not only did we enjoy inspired food, we got to talk with both Jonathan and Camille. it's rare for a chef to leave his kitchen, kneal at your table and talk to you for fifteen minutes about his food and recent travels.

we'll be making frequent trips to this drugstore--we're addicted!