To reward your patience, here are a few more clips for your viewing pleasure. I have a backlog of photos on our camera, so I’ll try to get those up soon. For now…enjoy!
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As promised, here are some great videos of Jacob:
- Snoring like a Rock Star
- Still Snoring like a Rock Star
- Eating Solid Foods
- Noises
- Buzzing all Alone
- Just Chillin’
Let us know which one is your favorite 🙂 I’ll have a couple more up in a few days.
The past two weeks have been pretty exciting at the Werth household. Washington H.S. had its homecoming, with the end of the term the following week. Finals went well and Elise wrapped up grading to prepare for the start of the new term today. Meanwhile, Elise followed Jacob’s lead and came down with a virus; which she is starting to get over. Jacob, on the other hand, had an ear infection but quickly rebounded after day 2 of his 10-day antibiotic schedule.
This past Thursday and Friday, I took off from work to give a presentation at the Midwest Chapter Music Library Assoc Conference. The talk went well, with good feedback and interest, and I got to taste some of Indianapolis’ delicious craft beer!
In other news, the UI holds some promising job prospects that should develop in the coming weeks. Also, Jacob ushered in two new firsts: two teeth are starting to come in and he stood up all by himself from a seated position (holding on to his jumper). There will be plenty of pictures and videos coming soon, but for now enjoy these from Halloween!
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Cedar Rapids Rough Riders
On Friday, October 14th, Elise treated me out to a hockey game night for my birthday. Unknown to me, she had purchased two tickets for the Cedar Rapids hockey team’s home game against Souix City. Having never been to a Rough Rider game before, we enjoyed checking out the ice arena and soaking in the experience. The game turned out to be quite the blowout going in to the 3rd period at 3-1, but ending the game with the Rough Riders winning 10-2! It was a fun game to watch and I particularly enjoyed my souvenir cup filled with malted beverage and sitting in the 3rd row. The seats allowed us to be up close to the action which was pretty exciting. Attempts to capture the players skating past with my phone’s camera usually ended in a blur, but here are a couple shots that turned out alright:
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Weekend in Minnesota (cont)
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Weekend in Minnesota
After getting the new car, I (Jon) decided we needed to go on a road trip since I would not get to drive it otherwise. As a result we headed up to Glencoe, MN for the weekend of Oct 8-9. It was a great chance to relax with family and enjoy the beautiful weather. On Saturday, we (Fred, Cathy, Teresa, Elise, Jacob, and Jon) headed to Carlson Orchard near Winsted. We enjoyed the hayride (more of a wagon ride), pumpkins, and – of course – picking apples. It was a great time and produced some nice pictures, which can be seen in the gallery below:
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New Car!
After looking, testing, and researching for a number of months, we finally found the car we’ve been looking for. We test drove a variety of cars (such as the Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, Chevy Cruze) but ultimately decided on the Hyundai Accent. 
The car has really nice features that we were looking for (Bluetooth, hatchback, good mpg) and we much preferred the styling over other similar cars. However, other people clearly did as well, since we could not find one of these cars in stock at any dealership within a 400 miles. After putting out a couple of locate requests at nearby dealers, one finally arrived in Cedar Rapids in a color we wanted. We have so far been very happy with our purchase and enjoy driving it around.
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Kalona Fall Festival
On September 23-24, Kalona had its annual fall festival. The festivities were held on the grounds of the Kalona Village museum, where historic buildings have been placed and preserved for visitors to investigate. Along with the museum and the many buildings, 
there was also a large number of tents containing anything from food and craft vendors to hobby or old-word trade demonstrations. For example, one building held the process of removing corn from husks and grinding it to corn flour using belted wheels and machinery from the early 20th century.
The event also provided a number of food vendors – one in particular, being the grilled turkey legs often found at the MN Renaissance Festival (see picture). We ate our turkey leg while listening to the sounds of a local folk band. Altogether, it was a great time and until the very end, had excellent weather.
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Catch up and Mustard
After having quite the eventful September, I figured I should probably post something about the latest going-on’s of the Werth family:
The first weekend in September, Fred, Cathy, and Teresa drove down to Kalona to spend the weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and seeing the sites in our new (relatively) setting. After going on a walking tour of the town and seeing the many quilt squares in the downtown sidewalks, we stopped by the local hang: Yotty’s ice cream shop. On Sunday the family went to the Iowa Festival of Beers held in the Amana Colonies at Millstream Brewery. As always, there was plenty of beer to be sampled, along with some delicious ciders and root beers. On Monday – before heading out – all six of us went and toured a building downtown that was going up for auction on the 20th of this month.
The next two weeks brought many 
new items and interesting scenarios. At the University of Iowa ITS (where Jon works PT as an IT Support Consultant as of Aug. 1), the Enterprise Services team had just been announced for a reorganization. Many of my team were being moved to another area while mostly retaining our responsibilities. However, there are a variety of concerns yet to be solved. On Monday, Sept. 12th, I met with my supervisor who offered me an additional 20 hours, putting me as a temporary miscellaneous professional working 40 hours/week. My responsibilities remained the same (now able to achieve the amount of work desired) working 50% in desktop support and 50% in managing the university’s Master Calendar.
At the end of that week, Elise, Jacob, and I drove up to Minnesota on Friday night to spend the weekend in Eden Prairie. On Saturday, while the ladies had a bridal shower for Elise’s cousin, Larry, Fred, and I spent a beautiful afternoon golfing (which my back later paid dearly for). After spending time with friends and brunch on Sunday, we headed back to Iowa to resume the next work week. On Wednesday and Thursday, I took part in a Web Accessibility training seminar and will spend Friday at a Special Libraries Conference in Iowa City. Meanwhile, Kalona is getting ready for its annual fall festival this weekend.
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MLIS Degree
On July 29th, I finished my classes at the University of Iowa for my Library and Information Science degree. Today I received the proof of my scholarly efforts: a piece of paper. Time to celebrate!
