Syttende Mai

The Jerdees and Underwoods gathered together at Allen and Becky's to celebrate the Norwegian Constitution Day (May 17th). Not only was it a good excuse to have a party on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, but it was a nice chance to recognize our family heritage.

Note the cards in the pictures written in Norwegian, there was a test hosted by future teacher Hunter Underwood after dinner, won by Allen. There was also a Norwegian quiz which was won by Amy, her prize was a CD of Norwegian music. The prizes for the spelling test were the entire collection of books relating to Norway available from the Half Price Bookstore, which totaled 5.

Hunter burned the midnight oil preparing the decorations the night before the celebration with the help of Becky and Al. There was also a few minutes of telling Ole and Sven jokes, with a couple laughs and many groans. Amy and Dave prepared a slideshow of the pictures from their trip to Norway with Beverly and the Shearers.

The meal was prepared by Becky with help from the Aquavit cookbook: various things wrapped in Lefse, vin, gul erte suppe (yellow pea soup (of which the boys had many laughs over), svin (pork ribs), poteter (mashed potatoes), surkål (sauerkraut), tyttebær (lingonberry juice), all followed up with a dessert of krinlga, glögg and Linie Aquavit (none for the boys though).

Adam Graduates from DMACC

Adam recently celebrated his graduation from DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College) with an Associate of Applied Sciences degree in Business Information Systems, aka computer programming. By maintaining a cumulative GPA over 3.5 he was able to graduate with honors (gold cord) as a member of Phi Theta Kappa (gold stole and tassel), a national 2-year college honor society.








The DMACC graduation ceremony consisted of 4 separate campuses (Urban, West, Ankeny and Newton) and lasted approximately two hours, as over 700 student’s names were announced as they crossed the stage. The evening was capped off with Allen and Becky going to Kim and Adam’s to watch Survivor while sipping sparkling wine and nibbling on cheese and crackers.







Some of you are probably thinking, didn't Adam already graduate from Iowa State University? Yes, but this degree applied to his current career and was paid for through tuition reimbursement at Wells Fargo, making it well worth the trouble.

Back in Des Moines for the Summer

Becky and Al here from Venice, Florida, chasing the sun to the north (we call ourselves sunbirds rather than snowbirds) for fun in the sun. Sun? What sun?

We don't have pictures to prove it (our computer is disabled for blogging so we're writing from a common computer located in our condo clubhouse) but we made fast tracks through Florida, Georgia (Atlanta was a traffic jam), Tennessee, and Illinois, arriving in Iowa in just two days...did we say 750 miles per day? We wanted to get here for Adam's graduation ceremony. On our return trip to Florida at the end of September, we'll take a more circuitous route to have time to look at beautiful things along the way.

Waiting for Adam to show you his graduation picture...at least the flowering crab trees were in full bloom and the evening was balmy.